TERMINOLOGY IN THE FIELD OF DIGITAL DIDACTICS AND PROBLEMS OF EQUIVALENCE

Digitalization is a crucial feature of education in the new millennium. Digital didactics covers its concepts, digital knowledge and the education environment to be created. Scholars are making an attempt to introduce digital technologies to the context of learning and to improve educational products. At this stage of digital didactics development, terminological differences are already noticeable. It requires entire study of both didactics and translation studies.

Digital didactics is a subsection of Pedagogy, an academic discipline about the organization of the learning process in a digital society; transfer-integrative field of academic knowledge; it serves as a basis for creating teaching methods and teaching strategies in special areas, academic disciplines and modules [3, с. 6]. The great impact on the development of Digital Didactics was made by scholars N.F. Alefirenko, L.M. Andrjuhina, V.I. Blinov, M.V. Dulinov, E. Ju. Esenina, I.S. Sergeev.

Taking into account the beginning of Digital Didactics development as a science, the unification of the translations is needed for the design of its terminological database that will be picked upon the dictionary.

60 terms related to Digital Didactics were selected. The manual selection method was used. The terms were selected from the Glossary of concepts of New Didactics [5]. The Russian-language terms were matched with equivalents in English using Macmillan Dictionary [6] and Oxford Dictionary [7]. The resulting lists were analyzed and divided into thematic groups.

The European Scientific Society identifies four main methods of translating terminology:

1. the use of a functional equivalent inherent in the cultural and linguistic traditions of the country;
2. translating word by word;
3. transcribing and neologizing [1].

The following methods are used in translation into Russian:

1. Selection of the lexical equivalent of the term of the Source Language (SL) in the Target Language (TL). This is the most optimal method of translation. For example, the English term education corresponds to the Russian one образование. However, this method can possibly be used only in cases where the countries of the SL and the TL have the same level of social developments.

2. Semantic calque, which can be used when the structure of the target lexical item coincides in both languages. For example, the English term blended learning corresponds to the Russian смешанное обучение. This method is acquired its` name due to the semantics of terms which are common to both languages, while the structure of the term created in the SL corresponds to the norms of the original language, and the structure of the term in the TL corresponds to the norms of this language.

3. Another type of calque is structural calque (the structure of a lexical item is borrowed while translating together with the item). For example, the English term interaction is semantically equal to the Russian взаимодействие.

4. Another most common method of translation terms is borrowing. The structure, semantics and form of a term are completely borrowed from the original language during the translation process. If a term appears in the TL with a new concept or phenomenon that it denotes, in this case, this appearance can be accepted. For example, the English term tutor corresponds to the Russian тьютор.

According to our research material analysis, 16 items have lexical equivalents in the SL. Russian term цифровая грамотность is translated by the English term digital literacy, and the English term feedback is translated by the Russian term обратная связь. The Russian term образование is translated by the English term education. Usually terms-equivalents of different languages already exist in both languages, so when translating there is no need to come up with new terms or neologisms. A person has to choose a term that already exists in the language.

29 items from the list of 60 terms were translated by calque. The English term network society is translated by the Russian term сетевое общество. The term персонифицирование в обучении translated by calque from English personalized learning, inverted class is перевёрнутый класс. The emergence of new foreign models of terms in a TL is a result of complex elements-translation of lexical items, where each item in the SL corresponds to an equivalent in the TL.

15 terms were borrowed from the English language. The Russian language has borrowings: the term треннинг (training), геймификация (gamefication), тьютор (tutor) and others. Often terms become duplicates of terms that already exist in the language. For example, the term moderator has a similar term in Russian администратор, юнит (unit) — раздел, параграф. The term tutor has several translation options: тьютор, наставник, руководитель, куратор. There may be difficulties with the translation of the term webinar (интерактивный семинар, видеолекция, веб-конференция). The conclusion is that if a level of development of science and technology is the same in the countries of the SL and the TL, a person needs to find the equivalent of the term of the SL in TL or create a new term from the elements of the TL.

In Russia in recent decades the loanword method has been widely used in the translation of terms for didactic discourse, as well as in the humanities and pedagogical sciences. The vocabulary of the field of digital didactics can be divided into several groups:

1) Borrowings from the English language (terms denoting facts and phenomena of reality that did not exist in Russia before). It can be explained by extralinguistic factors. The development of pedagogy and computer technologies abroad is ahead of Russia. There is a tendency to borrow terms from the English language due to the international nature and the extraordinary prevalence of English around the world in various spheres. This was reflected in loanword through calque (автоматизация обучения, коучинг, кейс-обучение), transcription and transliteration (геймификация, дидактика, ворк-шоп). However, experts use borrowed terms in different ways: some use the terms in a literal translation, while others use English vocabulary along with Russian.

2) Borrowed new English-language terms (to refer concepts that already exist in Russian language). The terms occur due to the general Europeanization and the craving for everything foreign, and therefore more fashionable and prestigious. In this group, there are a large number of lexical items that are already familiar to us (тьютор, цифровая грамотность, перевёрнутый класс).

A possible explanation is Russian mentality, as Russian believe that everything foreign is more prestigious and better than Russian. Therefore, when using lexical items of a foreign language people consider a phenomenon or object to be more higher quality than in Russia.

At the next stage of the study, the selected terminology items (60 items) were divided into 3 groups according to the subject of translation. The following dictionaries were used: Pedagogical terminology dictionary [8], Dictionary of marketing terms [4], Dictionary of IT terms [2]. 36 terminological units were identified from the field of pedagogy (дидактическая модель, смешанное обучение, кейс-обучение), 13 from the field of marketing (вебинар, наставник), 11 from the field of computer technology (интерактив, большие данные).

This ratio allows us to emphasize that digital didactics is still developing as a science; at this stage it is a related field which includes a wide range of terminology from other areas – marketing, pedagogy, computer technology. The most influential field is pedagogy. The results showed that many terms are borrowed from English. The most common method of translation is calque, due to insufficiency of terminology in the Russian language. The development of pedagogy and computer technologies is moving ahead of Digital didactics. When translating specialized texts, the complete and accurate transmission of the original content can be challenging, mainly because of the differences in language systems, phenomena of reality, and because of the differently formed traditions of nominating concepts.

References:

1. Anisimova, A. G. Methodology for translation of English-language Terms of the Humanities and Socio-political Sciences: and the abstract of the dissertation / A. G Anisimova // M.: MGU, 2010.  – P.11.
2. Belova, N. V. Short dictionary of IT terms for language education specialists / N.V. Belova, E.V. Rubljova  // Saint-Petersburg: Zlatoust, 2017. — 68 pp.
3. Blinov, V.I. Project of the didactic concept for digital vocational education and training / V.I. Blinov, M.V. Dulinov., E.Ju.  Esenina, I.S.Sergeev // Moscow:  Pero, 2019. — 72 pp.
4. Dictionary of marketing terms. [Electronic resource] URL: https://www.marketch.ru/marketing_dictionary/ (date of request 30.03.2021)
5. Glossary of concepts for New Didactics. [Electronic resource] URL: https://didactica.yspu.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/1. (date of request 15.03.2021)
6. Macmillan Dictionary. [Electronic resource] URL: https://www.macmillandictionary.com/about.html (Date of request 18.03.2021)
7. Oxford Dictionary. [Electronic resource] URL: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/ (date of request 18.03.2021)
8. Pedagogical terminology dictionary. [Electronic resource] URL: https://rus-pedagogical-dict.slovaronline.com/ (date of request 30.03.2021)