journal of linguistic studies

9. DISCUSSION
In the previous section, we brought forth an account of English common plant
containing an animal name and their Romanian counterparts. We have seen that most
English plant names entail an equivalent, but a very small number of plant names still
remains which bear no representation in the Romanian language. This can be explained
by the fact that some British plants or plants common in the UK are not found in the
native Romanian flora. Also the choice of the animal name coming up in the English and
Romanian equivalent may be determined by the shape of the plant or by some kind of
resemblance with the observed animal.
If we look at the numbers we can see that from 80 English idioms observed, only 7
do not account for a Romanian equivalent, which represent 14%. Deepening our
investigation we find that, from the remaining 73 Romanian counterparts, 32 (i.e. 40%)
do not entail animal names. 22 of the Romanian common plant names (i.e. 29%) observe
the English choice in animal names, while the other 14 (17%) take a different animal
name. Thus, though most English common plant names containing an animal name entail
a Romanian equivalent, these counterparts do not always take a Romanian animal name.
As for the 56 additional Romanian common plant names containing an animal name,
2 of them, which is a minor 3.5 %, entailed animal body parts.
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10. CONCLUSIONS
After having analysed the 80 common English plant names containing an animal
name and their Romanian counterparts, we have found that: 14 names do not exhibit a
Romanian common plant, which may be determined by the fact that the respective plants
are not natively growing in Romania, they are imported. 32 English plant names do not
observe animal names in the Romanian counterpart, whereas from the remaining 41
names, 23 observe the same colour names as in English and the last 14 contain a different
colour name in Romanian. Comparing the percentages we will observe that even though
the percentage of plant names containing the same animal name in Romanian is larger
than that of plant names containing a different animal name (29% vs. 17%), the greater
percentage (i.e. 40%) of plant names do not contain any animal name.
After extending our research on Romanian common plant names containing animal
names, we found not only English common plant names whose Romanian counterparts do
not exhibit animal names, but also Romanian common plant names entailing containing
an animal name, whose English counterparts do not entail animal names.
REFERENCES
Baker, M. (Ed.) (2001). Routledge Encyclopaedia of Translation Studies. New York:
Routledge.
British Wild Flowers. Online: http://www.british-wild-flowers.co.uk/.
Lungu Badea, G. (2003). Dictionary of terms employed in the theory, practice and
didactics of translation. Timişoara: Ed. Orizonturi.
Raţă, Georgeta, Grigoriu, Alma-Lioara & Imbrea, Ilinca-Merima. (2005). British Flora.
Names of Plants in Latin, English and Romanian. Timişoara: Ed. Mirton.
ASTRID SIMONE GROSZLER
119, Calea Aradului, Timişoara – 300645, Romania
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