Thanks
Artur, interesting issue for a brief intellectually-oriented
after-lunch break.
IMHO the (in)consistency problems pointed out by
Artur are not specific to Gretl, but depend
upon the peculiar way in which scientific terms and they
acronyms are sometimes ported in non-english jargons from
English.
For instance, in italian OLS is referred to verbally as such,
with the English acronym, or with the full Italian name "Minimi
Quadrati Ordinari" (possibly in the short version "Minimi
Quadrati" which takes for granted "Ordinari"). Nobody dreams
of saying or writing the acronym MQO(*). So
in italian texts you read things like "OLS, ovvero (=or) Minimi
Quadrati Ordinari..." which at first sight do not make any
sense. However, they do if you consider those
acronyms not as such but like short, hence particularly
convenient, synonims of the full names borrowed from English.
This happen in other disciplines as well. For instance Covid-19
tests are made using "Polymerase Chain Reaction", PCR, which in
Italian is "Reazione
a catena della polimerasi"... PCR.
Bottom line: in Italian full names should be
translated but acronyms should not. How about other languages?
bye,
Stefano
(*) the only example I know is a translation of Hamilton's book
with all the acronyms translated - reading it drives you crazy.
--
________________________________________________________________________
Stefano Fachin
Professore Ordinario di Statistica Economica
Dip. di Scienze Statistiche
"Sapienza" Universitā di Roma
P.le A. Moro 5 - 00185 Roma - Italia
Tel. +39-06-49910834
fax +39-06-49910072
web http://stefanofachin.site.uniroma1.it/