Mapping the Cultural Interference of Term Variation

Abstract

Communication in a specific setting should be carried out efficiently since language miscomprehension can prevent the message from reaching the audience adequately. More specifically, the correct use of particular terms is essential in specific texts to describe concepts. These terms could be expressed differently when used in other languages and this fact could cause interferences in language communication. In this paper, the main objective was to determine if the written form of terms varied and interfered with cross-cultural communication. Furthermore, to determine the causes of term variation across languages in texts written in different languages, it is important to establish clear distinctions between the semantic fields of words. The corpus of this research was composed of twenty texts written in English and the same twenty texts written in Spanish that transmitted the agreements of the United Nations related to specific topics. They were written in the official languages of the United Nations in such a way that there was not an original or target language, they were supposedly written originally in all the languages at the same time. In order to determine if the written form of terms varied in a specific setting, the selected texts were analysed with Wordsmith Tools 5.0. First, the key words of the texts in Spanish and in English were identified, and then the written forms and the use of synonyms in Spanish and in English were compared and contrasted. The results showed that there were variations in the interpretation of terms when expressed in different languages and those may be due to cross-cultural interference.