Thank you Stefano for sharing this.
Le mer. 11 nov. 2020 à 14:46, Stefano <stefano.fachin(a)uniroma1.it> a écrit :
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.
Yes! And at some point you have to ask if it's worth introducing some
non-english terms at least for those most common acronyms. Getting back to
gretl, this is for instance what I'm trying (timidly) to do with gretl's
albanian translation. Research publications from the Central bank of
Albania, the National statistics office and other locally-based economic
research groups widely use translated descriptions and acronyms but
university textbooks still heavily use english ones instead. So I'm always
mixed-up where to find the right balance between these two different
experiences.
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(*).
That's really surprising to me indeed! I tend to compare with
french-speaking teaching and experience of econometrics :)
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.
And I think that for such "complicated" things the use of the original
English acronym does make sense.
Bottom line: in Italian full names should be translated but acronyms should
not. How about other languages?
From this end, I'm sure that our french-speaking friends would not
appreciate an "OLS" acronym instead of "MCO". Indeed, you find no
french
econometric courses or textbooks where OLS, WLS, GLS, GMM, MLE... are not
"in french", both as a label and an acronym. :)
(*) the only example I know is a translation of Hamilton's book with all
the acronyms translated - reading it drives you crazy.
Ouf :)
All the best,
Artur