MED Magazine

MED Magazine - Issue 29 - April 2005

Romanian and English – a mediated partnership
by Mihaela H. Precup

A country with a long francophone tradition, Romania has been increasingly leaning towards English since the 1989 political changes. During the communist regime, the forbidden attraction for the English (or even French)-speaking worlds was obviously perceived as a transgression, and although both these languages were taught in schools, alongside German and vast amounts of Russian, progress was not encouraged. There was a severe lack of good textbooks, few good dictionaries existed, and foreign speakers were forbidden fruit. The best way of improving one's English by actually hearing it was rock'n'roll, as well as cinema, and so it was that English entered Romania via popular culture. The partnership between English and Romanian was mediated by music, and later on, television.

Television and its English insertions into Romanian

This connection between learning English, music and television has been preserved and its effects are obvious with learners in the age group of 14-24, roughly speaking. Although the number of native speakers coming to Romania to teach is on the increase, the main source Romanians have for hearing natives speak (and sing) is still television. Thus, a large number of words have simply been transplanted into Romanian and few bother to translate them. For example, nobody translates words such as top, track or hit, not to mention the very broadly used cool and man (for the more proficient, dude), as well as swear words which are imported from English and used more widely (one hopefully does not hear them in the classroom but is bound to hear them in the street).

From television, a number of words and phrases have been either translated word for word into Romanian or simply used as such. For example, at some point Romanians started hearing the expression Have a nice day/evening! on television (at first, at the end of the news and a novelty for some time, as it was not the usual way Romanian broadcasters used to say good-bye). After wondering about it (and ridiculing it) for some time, more and more Romanians began to find it "classy", especially owners of businesses who started asking their staff to use it all the time. Now, one has come to hear 'Sa aveti o zi buna!' (literal translation of Have a nice day!) everywhere, and most students of English perceive it as very natural and refuse to stick to established good-bye formulas (such as 'Numai bine', for instance). It is still ridiculed in the cultural press or by writers but with little or no consequence.

"Romanianized" computer language

Yet another source of distress for academics and teachers of English in general is the way words from computer language have been literally taken over by Romanian speakers, through the same insertion mechanism as above. For instance, one either translates them word for word into Romanian, which can lead to examples of absurd prose (burning CDs translated as 'ardere de CD-uri' in Romanian is an invitation for the uninitiated audience to understand that one is setting one's CD collection on fire). There is also the insertion of English words as such into Romanian, and sometimes English verbs are even given Romanian endings and hybrid words emerge. For instance, the verb to update is conjugated thus:

eu updatez noi updatm

tu updatezi voi updatai

el updateaz ei updateaz

It is difficult to believe this problem will ever be solved because speakers will always prefer efficiency to the norm and it is much shorter to use 'updatez' than 'îmi aduc la zi'.

ESP and the written press

Incidentally, the same goes for students of English for Special Purposes (ESP). This is usually the case of people dealing in fields which are relatively new in Romania, such as advertising or public relations (PR), where there was no previously established vocabulary, and where, once again, English is usually inserted into Romanian very comfortably (e.g.: words such as briefing, PR, and even meeting). These terms are also used without qualms in the press, which has also contributed to consolidating their position in the language.

There are also terms which cannot be pinned down as belonging to one specialized language, such as opportunity (translated as 'oportunitate') or location (translated as 'locaie'), and which are used although there are perfectly viable alternatives in Romanian, which do exist in dictionaries of the Romanian language, unlike the two examples above. They also started to be used in the media, where Romanians can also pick up (and they do) literal translations of phrases such as be history (in Romanian 'a fi istorie' means not 'to be a thing of the past' but 'to be historic', which is obviously a different matter).

Romanian insertions into English

One problem which also comes from the extensive use of television (without being balanced by the use of books) in learning English is the constant blending of registers. Formal and informal words and phrases are mixed even by students of literature and cultural studies, who should also be in a position to have substantial readings in their respective fields and use them appropriately.

Apart from this, there is always the issue of English prepositions, which tend to be replaced by a translation of their equivalents in Romanian. Frequent errors include think at, be surprised of, an invitation at dinner, and it usually takes extensive practice for this to be corrected.

Yet another common insertion into English is the profusion of definite articles. Any English text or speech by a Romanian of upper-intermediate and even advanced levels will contain a surplus of definite articles, which emerge from a literal translation of the phrase or sentence one constructs from Romanian into English. There is also the case of indefinite articles missing from the English spoken by Romanians precisely because they are not present in Romanian (with professions, for instance: 'I am engineer.'). However, the latter does not usually occur with speakers at upper-intermediate and advanced levels.

Conclusion

However, the partnership between popular culture and learning English in Romania has been more profitable than this article may have led one to believe so far. Without television, the majority of Romanian students of English would not be able to get in touch with everyday English, as for the average Romanian the opportunity of visiting English-speaking countries is still a luxury. What Romanian teachers are trying to do is to help students use written materials for learning English as well, without resorting solely to them, as is sometimes the case in smaller Romanian towns where teachers are confronted with the lack of appropriate tools for improving their students' speaking and listening skills. As in other areas of study, reading is slowly becoming obsolete, and most of these interferences between English and Romanian spring from this particular difficulty teachers have to deal with.