The neology of form in translation studies: a study based on the journal Meta 1966-2019

This paper presents the results of an exploratory research on formal neology in a Translation Studies diachronic corpus containing all the French texts published in the journal Meta: Translators' Journal, between 1966 and 2019. It mainly considers the evolution of the field and knowledge that the lexicon allows us to observe, rather than discussing neology as a theoretical and practical phenomenon. This work was carried out following an endogenous approach in which we focused solely on our corpus, without relying on external resources. The analysis of neologisms in this corpus was carried out using a mixed methodology where qualitative (candidate terms) and quantitative (number of occurrences) data obtained through automatic processing were analyzed qualitatively (terms status validation) and quantitatively (term frequencies and frequency difference). Based on these results, we first provide an overview of terminology innovation in the journal between 1980 and 2019, and then a panorama by decade focussing on theoretical trends in Translation Studies. The study demonstrates the relevance of this methodology, which exploits corpora as an empirical anchor for the study of the evolution of a discipline. It also reveals the abundant terminological innovation contained in Meta's pages, during the period studied.