A study on english vietnamese translation of compound nouns in information technology

VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
******

NGUYỄN THỊ OANH

A STUDY ON ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF
COMPOUND NOUNS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC DỊCH ANH-VIỆT CÁC DANH TỪ GHÉP
CHUYÊN NGÀNH CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG TIN

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201

Hanoi - 2016


VIETNAM NATIONAL UNIVERSITY, HANOI
UNIVERSITY OF LANGUAGES AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
FACULTY OF POST-GRADUATE STUDIES
******

NGUYỄN THỊ OANH

A STUDY ON ENGLISH-VIETNAMESE TRANSLATION OF
COMPOUND NOUNS IN INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

NGHIÊN CỨU VIỆC DỊCH ANH-VIỆT CÁC DANH TỪ GHÉP
CHUYÊN NGÀNH CÔNG NGHỆ THÔNG TIN

M.A MINOR PROGRAMME THESIS

Field: English Linguistics
Code: 60220201
Supervisor: Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kiều Thị Thu Hương

Hanoi - 2016


DECLARATION

I, Nguyen Thi Oanh, hereby certify that the minor thesis entitled “A study on
English-Vietnamese translation of compound nouns in information technology” is
the study of my own research to fulfill the Degree of Master of Art at Faculty of
Post Graduate Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi University of
Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, Hanoi. The
substance of this research has not been submitted for any degree at any other
university or institution.

Hanoi, 2016
Signature

Nguyen Thi Oanh

i

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Throughout the process of accomplishing the thesis, I have received the support and
encouragement of teachers, family and friends.
First and foremost, I would like to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor,
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Kieu Thi Thu Huong, for her patient guidance, critical feedback,
encouragement and contructive provision throughout my research.
I would also like to send my sincere thanks to all my lecturers at the Faculty of
Post-graduate Studies, University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam
National University, Hanoi for their useful lectures during my M.A course.
Finally, my special thanks go to my family and friends for their considerable
assistance during the time of the research conduction. Without their help and
support, this study could not have been completed.

ii


ABSTRACT
This thesis focuses on the translation of English compound nouns in the information
technology (IT from now on) into Vietnamese. It aims at investigating the five
common strategies normally applied to translate IT compound nouns from English
into Vietnamese.
The study starts with the theoretical background that elaborates on the notion of
translation, translation methods as well as translation procedures and equivalence.
Then it touches upon the typical features of English compound nouns in information
technology.

In the main part, a detailed investigation and examination of the

translation of these English compound nouns is carried out, from which it identifies

the common translation strategies used in this field. The five common strategies,
namely transposition, transference, naturalization, couplets procedure (combining
both transference and naturalization) and communication methods are common
choices that translators often make in different situations or for different types of
compound nouns, through each procedure embodies in itself both advantages and
disadvantages.
Hopefully, the results of the study will be of some help to people who are in charge
of teaching, studying and translating English IT terms into Vietnamese.

iii


LIST OF TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS

ABBREVIATIONS
IT:

Information technology

SL:

Source language

TL:

Target language

TABLES
Table 1: Classification of compound words according to part of speech
Table 2: Formations of compound nouns

Table 1: Acronyms in information technology
Table 2: Compound nouns formed by Noun and Noun
Table 3: Compound nouns formed by Adjective and Noun
Table 4: Compound nouns formed by Preposition and Noun
Table 5: Compound nouns formed by Verb and Noun
Table 6: Translation of compound nouns by transposition procedure
Table 7: Translation of compound nouns by transference procedure
Table 8: Translation of IT acronyms by transference procedure
Table 9: The translation of IT compound nouns by naturalization procedure
Table 10: The translation of IT compound nouns by both transference and
naturalization procedure (couplets)
Table 11: The translation of IT compound nouns by communicative method
FIGURES
Figure 1: The two main parts of information technology
Figure 2: The five functions of information technology

iv


TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION .................................................................................................... i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .................................................................................. ii
ABSTRACT ..........................................................................................................iii
LIST OF TABLES AND ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................... iv
PART A: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................ 1
1. Rationale of the study .................................................................................. 1
2. Aims of the study ......................................................................................... 1
3. Research questions ...................................................................................... 2
4. Scope of the study ........................................................................................ 2
5. Methods of the study ................................................................................... 2

6. Design of the study ....................................................................................... 2
PART B: DEVELOPMENT ................................................................................. 4
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................. 4
1. Translation Theory ........................................................................................ 4
1.1. Definition of translation............................................................................. 4
1.2. Definition of translation equivalence ......................................................... 5
1.3. Technical translation ................................................................................. 5
1.4. Translation methods .................................................................................. 6
1.5. Translation procedures .............................................................................. 8
2. Compound nouns in English........................................................................ 10
2.1. Compound words .................................................................................... 10
2.2. Classification of compound words ........................................................... 11
2.3. Compound nouns ..................................................................................... 12
3. An overview of information technology .................................................... 16
3.1. What is information technology? ............................................................. 16
3.2. What are the main parts of information technology? ................................ 17
3.3. What are the main functions of information technology? ......................... 20

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CHAPTER 2: FINDINGS AND ANALYSIS ..................................................... 22
1. Introduction ................................................................................................. 22
2. English IT compound nouns in some IT documents and their Vietnamese
equivalents in the dictionary or on the Internet ............................................. 22
3. Translation strategies applied to translate IT compound nouns from
English into Vietnamese .................................................................................. 26
3.1. Translation of compound nouns by transposition procedure .................... 27
3.2. Translation of compound nouns by transference procedure (use of loan
words) ............................................................................................................ 28

3.3. Translation of compound terms by naturalization procedure .................... 32
3. 4. Translation of compound nouns by both transference and naturalization
procedure (couplets) ....................................................................................... 33
3.5. Translation of compound nouns by communicative method .................... 34
4. Summary ...................................................................................................... 35
PART C: CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................. 44
1. Conclusions ................................................................................................ 44
2. Limitations of the study ............................................................................. 46
3. Suggestions for further research ............................................................... 47
REFERENCES .................................................................................................... 48
APPENDIX 1 ......................................................................................................... I
APPENDIX 2 ..................................................................................................... XV

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PART A: INTRODUCTION
1. Rationale of the study
In the globalized world, translation has played an important role and has had
remarkable influences on facilitating international exchanges and cooperation
in various fields, particularly in information technology. Information
technology (IT) has been crossing geographical boundaries in serving clients
and other industries.
In Vietnam, information technology has an indispensable role in the country’s
industrialization

and

modernization.

Information

technology

with

its

superhighway has revolutionized man’s ways of working. In the situation of an
open

market

economy

with

international

cooperation

and

fast-pace

development of IT, translation of IT terminologies, therefore, has become an
urgent need to exchange information and update modern technology.
Being a project assistant in the FPT Corporation, one of the biggest IT
corporations in Vietnam, I am fully aware that the translation of IT terms is a
difficult job. It requires translators to continuously improve knowledge in the

IT field as well as translation skills. That is the main inspiration to me to carry
out this research.
All the things concerned above have offered the researcher an opportunity to
conduct a study on “English-Vietnamese translation of compound nouns in
information technology. Hopefully, the thesis will bring benefits to
translators/interpreters, researchers, IT engineers, and those who are interested
in the field.
2. Aims of the study
In brief, the study is aimed at:
 Identifying common English compound nouns in information
technology and their Vietnamese equivalents;

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 Analyzing the translation strategies applied to translate these terms.
3. Research questions
To achieve the above-stated aims, the following research questions are raised:
1. What are English IT compound nouns in some IT documents and their
Vietnamese equivalents in the dictionary or on the Internet?
2. What are translation strategies normally applied to translate IT compound
nouns from English into Vietnamese?
4. Scope of the study
The English compound words in information technology are innumerous and
diverse in many materials and documents. Due to the author’s limited time and
experience, it would be impossible for her to cover all compound terms.
Moreover, among different types of IT compound words such as compound
adjectives compound adverbs and compound verbs, compound nouns are
considered to be the largest in number and variety. Thus, the study only focuses
on the English compound nouns mainly in computer technology section.

5. Methods of the study
Since the aim of the study is to analyze and pinpoint some common translation
strategies used in the translation of English IT compound nouns into
Vietnamese, the main method of the study is descriptive. Also, some other
additional methods have been used, namely analytic, statistical, comparative
and contrastive methods.
In the research, a number of IT compound nouns in English and their
equivalents in Vietnamese are collected, and processed with various activities
of sub-group classification, description, analysis, and compare and contrast.
6. Design of the study
The present thesis is divided into three parts: Introduction, Development and
Conclusion.
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 Part A entitled INTRODUCTION, which gives the rationale, aims, research
questions, scope, method and design of the study.
 Part B with the title of DEVELOPMENT, is divided into three chapters:
Chapter 1 reviews theoretical background of the study. Some concepts of
translation theory such as translation definition, translation methods, translation
equivalence and translation procedures have been reviewed. The chapter also
provides theories of compound words and compound nouns in English.
Chapter 2, entitled “The translation of compound nouns in information
technology from English into Vietnamese”, investigates typical translation
strategies employed in the translation of IT compound nouns from English into
Vietnamese. Analysis and discussion are made to bring out more insight to
those translation patterns and some methods are drawn out for better translation
of these terms in the information technology field.
 Part C, namely CONCLUSION, presents major findings as well as some
limitations of the study. Suggestions for further study are also included.

3


PART B: DEVELOPMENT
CHAPTER 1: LITERATURE REVIEW
To support the analysis, this chapter discusses relevant concepts and theories that
help build the theoretical aspect of the study. The first part of this chapter mainly
addresses the conceptions concerning translation, its types and the translation
methods or procedures; and the second part devotes to features of compound noun
and its classification.
1. Translation Theory
1.1. Definition of translation
The concept of translation has been defined in various ways by different linguists,
among which the followings stand out.
Let us now start with the definition from Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary,
which says translation is the process of translating words or texts from one language
into another.
Catford (1965: 20) defines translation as the replacement of textual material in one
language (source language) by equivalent textual material in another language
(target language).
According to Newmark (1988), translation is a craft consisting of the attempt to
replace a written message and statement in one language by the same message
and/or statement in another language.
Bell (1991) simply provides the goal of translation as the transformation of a text
originally in one language into an equivalent text in a different language retaining,
as far as possible, the content of the message and the formal features and functional
roles of the original text.
Although these definitions have some differences, they still have common features
that translation is considered as the conversion from a source language to a target

language to find appropriate equivalents.

4


1.2. Definition of translation equivalence
Translation equivalence is considered as a principal concept in Western translation
theory. As Catford (1965) concludes, “the central problem of translation-practice is
that of finding target language equivalents. A central task of translation theory is
that of defining the nature and conditions of translation equivalence”. (p.21)
Translation equivalence is the similarity between a word (or expression) in one
language and its translation in another. This similarity results from overlapping
ranges of reference.
1.3. Technical translation
In terms of nature of SL text, Sofer (1991) classifies translation into translation of
literary works and translation of scientific and technical matters. According to him,
literal translation covers such areas as fiction, poetry, drama and humanities in
general. Meanwhile, technical translation covers scientific and technical matters
such as books written on science, techniques like books on computers, instruction
manuals on TV, washing machine, etc. Technical translation is normally done by
the one with significant knowledge of linguistics and technical field. To define it
he writes:
One way of defining technical translation is by asking the question, does
the subject being translated required a specialized vocabulary, or is the
language non-specialized? If the text being translated includes specialized
terms in a given field, then the translation is technical.
According to Newmark (1981), “technical translation is one part of specialized
translation; institutional translation, the area of politics, commerce, finance,
government etc.…is the other”. He also gives the following definition:
Technical translation is primarily distinguished from other forms of

translation by terminology. Its characteristics, its grammatical features
merge with other varieties of language. Its characteristic format is technical
report, but is also includes instructions, manuals, notices, publicity, which
put more emphasis on forms of address and use of the second person.
5


According to him, technical translation has three levels: academic, professional,
and popular.
Technical translation is primary distinguished from other forms of translation by
terminology, its characteristics, grammatical features (passive, nominalization,
third person, empty verb, present tense) and its technical format (technical report).
In his opinion, the central difficulty in technical translation is usually the new
terminology. As a result, the very first requirement of translating technical texts or
documents is to comprehend and translate technical terminology exactly, which is
really a challenging task. In order to become a competent technical translator, one
of the most important requirements for a translator is to have sufficient linguistic
knowledge and background knowledge of a specific field.
1.4. Translation methods
The translation methods are divided into two main groups called semantic
translation and communicative translation (Newmark, 1988). He put these methods
in the form of a flattened V diagram that demonstrates the relationship between the
source language (SL) and the target language (TL).
SL emphasis

TL emphasis

Word-for-word translation

Adaptation

Literal translation

Free translation

Faithful translation

Idiomatic translation

Semantic translation

Communicative translation

According to his V diagram, the method of word-for-word translation is the closet
with SL and semantic translation is further and closer with the emphasis of TL.
Similarly, the adaption method is the one concerns the TL most and the
communicative is the method nearest to SL but furthest to TL.
 Word-for-word translation is demonstrated as interlinear translation in which
words are translated singly by their most common meanings, out of context. For
this method, the SL word order is preserved.
6


 Literal translation is a translation that follows closely the form of the source
language. In literal translation method, lexical words are translated singly, out of
context. The SL grammatical constructions are converted to their nearest TL
equivalent.
 Faithful translation attempts to be completely faithful to the intentions and the
text-realization of the SL writer. It is used when translators want to reproduce
precise contextual meaning within the constraints of TL grammatical structures.

It transfers cultural words and preserves the grammatical and lexical
“abnormality”.
 Semantic translation is somehow similar to faithful translation. However, it takes
more account of the aesthetic value of SL text. It is more flexible, less dogmatic
than faithful translation. Semantic translation admits the creative exception and
makes some small concession to the readership.
 Communicative translation attempts to render the exact contextual meaning of
the original, in such a way that, both content and language is readily acceptable
and comprehensible to the readership.
 Idiomatic translation reproduces the message of the original but tends to distort
nuances of meaning by preferring colloquialism and idioms where these do not
exist in the original. Therefore, the translation product of this method is more
flexible, natural and acceptable with the readership.
 Free translation reproduces the matter without the manner, or the content
without the form of the original. It is usually a paraphrase much longer than the
original.
 Adaption is considered as the freest form of translation. It is mainly used for
plays and poetry in which the themes, characters and plots are usually preserved,
the SL converted to the TL culture and text rewritten.
As can be see, each method exposes its own features and advantages although
many people have considered some methods more advanced or qualified than
others. Thus, the different and relevant methods of translation can be applied
flexibly and effectively due to different contexts and purposes.

7


1.5. Translation procedures
Newmark (1988b) mentions the difference between translation methods and
translation procedures. He writes that, "While translation methods relate to whole

texts, translation procedures are used for sentences and the smaller units of
language" (p.81).
The concept of translation strategy can be basically understood as ways of choosing
appropriate translation methods and procedures applied in particular cases.
The following translation procedures by Newmark (1988b: 81-93) are typical ones
in translation theory.
The following are the different translation procedures that Newmark (1988b)
proposes:
 Transference is the process of transferring an SL word to a TL word. The word
then becomes a “loan word”. It includes transliteration and is the same as what
Harvey (2000: 5) names "transcription." Words and expression that are normally
transferred are: names of all living and most dead people; geographical and
topographical names including newly independent countries unless they already
have recognized translations; name of periodicals and newspapers; titles of as yet
untranslated literary works, plays, films; names of private companies and
institutions; names of public or nationalized institutions; street names, addresses,
etc.
 Naturalization adapts the SL word first to the normal pronunciation, then to the
normal morphology of the TL. (Newmark, 1988b: 82)
 Cultural equivalent means replacing a cultural word in the SL with a TL one,
however, "they are not accurate" (Newmark, 1988b: 83)
 Functional equivalent requires the use of a culture-neutral word. (Newmark,
1988b: 83)
 Descriptive equivalent: According to Newmark (1988b: 84), “in translation,
description sometimes has to be weighed against function”. Moreover, functional
procedure and descriptive one can be simultaneously used in translation. It is
8


reasonable when he says “description and function are essential elements in

explanation and therefore in translation” and “in translation discussion, function
used to be neglected; now it tends to be overplayed”.
 Synonymy is a "near TL equivalent." “This procedure is used for a SL word
where there is no clear one-to-one equivalent, and the word is not important in the
text, in particular for adjectives or adverbs of quality”. The procedure is only
appropriate where literal translation is not possible and because the word is not
important enough for componential analysis. “Here, economy precedes accuracy.”
(Newmark, 1988b: 84)
 Through-translation is the literal translation of common collocations, names of
organizations and components of compounds. It can also be called: calque or loan
translation. (Newmark, 1988b: 84). “The most obvious examples of throughtranslations are the names of international organizations which often consist of
universal words which may be transparent for English and Romance languages,
and semantically motivated for Germanica and Slavonic.” In addition,
“international organizations are often known by their acronym”.
 Shift or transposition involves a change in the grammar from SL to TL, for
instance, (i) change from singular to plural, (ii) the change required when a
specific SL structure does not exist in the TL, (iii) change of an SL verb to a TL
word, change of an SL noun group to a TL noun and so forth. (Newmark, 1988b:
86). As it is stated by Newmark (1988b: 85), “transposition is the only translation
procedure concerned with grammar, and most translators make transpositions
intuitively”.
 Modulation occurs when the translator reproduces the message of the original
text in the TL text in conformity with the current norms of the TL, since the SL
and the TL may appear dissimilar in terms of perspective. (Newmark, 1988b: 88)
 Paraphrase is “an amplification or explanation of the meaning of a segment of
the text. It is used in an “anonymous” text when it is poorly written, or has
important implications and omissions” (Newmark, 1988b: 90).

9

 Couplets occurs when the translator combines two different procedures.
(Newmark, 1988b: 91)
 Translation label is regarded as “a provisional translation, usually of a new
institutional term, which should be made in inverted commas, which can later be
discreetly withdrawn”.
In general, translation procedures are useful to a translator. He/ She may apply them
flexibly in a particular context or combine two, three or four procedures (couplets,
triplets, quadruplets) to deal with a single problem.
2. Compound nouns in English
2.1. Compound words
One of the most common sources of new words in English is a morphological
process named compounding. The result of this process is compounds or compound
words.
Quirk (1972) states that a compound word is a unit consisting of two or more bases.
The similar definition is given by Jackson and Amvela that compounds may be
defined as stems consisting of more than one root. (2000:79).
According to Selkirk (1982:13), “Compounds in English are a type of word
structure made of two constituents, each belonging to one of the categories noun,
adjective, verb or preposition”.
In other words, it can be concluded that a compound word is joining two or more
separate words to produce a word with a new meaning.
For examples:
bed + time => bedtime
eye + sight => eyesight
black + board => blackboard
silk + worm => silkworm

10

2.2. Classification of compound words
There are a number of ways to classify compounds according to certain criteria such
as word class, syntactic, and semantic relationship between the roots.
The most accessible way of approaching the study and classification of compound
words is to classify them according to the part of speech, as the following list of
compounds shows:
Noun (N)

Noun (N)

Verb (V)

Adjective (Adj)

Preposition (P)/
Adverb (Adv)

Verb (V)

Adjective

Preposition (P)/

(Adj)

Adverb (Adv)

Noun

Verb

Adjective

(bookworm)

(brainwash)

(headstrong)

Noun

Verb

Adjective

(pickpocket)

(freeze-dry)

(dry-clean)

Noun

Verb

Adjective

(greenhouse)

(blindfold)

(light-green)

Noun

Verb

Adjective

Preposition

(back talk)

(downplay)

(overripe)

(into)

Table 1: Classification of compound words according to part of speech
Another possible approach is to classify compounds in terms of the semantic
relationship between the compound and its head. According to Spencer (1991),
compounds are classified into three types: endocentric, exocentric and appositional.
 Endocentric compounds are compound words containing a head that carries the
sematic load of the whole compound, making them semantically transparent. A
word like blackboard is an endocentric compound word, whose head is board.
 Exocentric compounds are compound words with no clear head inside them,
giving rise to semantic arbitrariness and opaqueness. It is thought that the head and
11

underlying semantics lies somewhere outside the compound or is generally absent.
For this reason, Exocentric compounds are called as headless compounds. “Pickpocket” is an example of the exocentric that refers to a kind of person not a kind of
pick or a kind or pocket. However, its meaning or any assumptions about its
semantic properties cannot be found from looking at the compound word itself.
 Appositional compounds are compound words, whose both constituents
contribute equally to the meaning of the compound in denoting an entity or
property. For example, bittersweet refers to a quality, which is both bitter and
sweet. The two elements seem to modify each other.
2.3. Compound nouns
2.3.1. Definition of compound nouns
Compound noun is a noun that is made up of two or more words. Each compound
noun acts as a single unit and can be modified by adjectives and other nouns. A
compound noun is one comprising at least two words, which has nouns as head and
involves nouns, verbs, or adjectives, prepositions as modifiers. However, there are
some rare cases where the noun head does not exist. The table below will illustrate
how other word classes combine to make a compound noun:
Noun

+

Noun

toothpaste

Adjective

+

Noun

monthly ticket

Verb (-ing)

+

Noun

swimming pool

Preposition

+

Noun

underground

Noun

+

Verb

haircut

Noun

+

Preposition

hanger on

Adjective

+

Verb

dry-cleaning

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Preposition

+

Verb

output

Table 2: The formations of compound nouns
The compound noun structure is extremely varied in the types of meaning relations
it can indicate. A compound noun can be used to indicate what someone does
(language teacher), what something is for (waste-paper basket, grindstone), what
the qualities of something are (whiteboard), how something works (immersion

heater), when something happens (night frost), where something is (doormat) or
what something is made of (woodpile).
There are three forms of compound nouns:
 Open or spaced that is when there is space between words (tennis shoe).
 Hyphenated that is when there is hyphen between words (six-pack).
 Closed or solid that is when there is no space or hyphen between words
(bedroom).
2.3.2. The distinction between a compound noun and a noun phrases
One of the most problems to deal with compounding is the criteria for
distinguishing between a compound and a phrase. The problem arises most when it
is a compound noun rather than a compound verb or a compound adjective. With
adjective, for example, tax-exempt is clearly a compound, there is no contrasting
syntactic construction where an adjective has a noun (tax) as modifier. Similarly, it
is unproblematic to distinct between the compound verb “baby-sit” and a
construction “baby sit”. In general, there are three criteria that we can base on to
distinguish a compound noun with a noun phrase: phonological, syntactic, and
semantic. These criteria are also used to distinguish the other types of compounds
and a phrase in general.
Phonologically, most compound nouns can be identified as having a main stress on
the first element meanwhile a phrase often has stress on the last. Consider the
following examples:

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Compound nouns

Noun phrases

„blackboard

a black ‟board

„greenhouse

a green „house

Syntactically, Jackson (2000) considers the specific syntactic features to make a
compound noun different from a noun phrase, namely, word order, interruptibility,
modification and inflexibility. By word order, he refers to the position of the
different elements of a compound in relation to one another. Some compounds have
ungrammatical or unusual word order in English. For example, dry-cleaning,
output, or haircut etc.
Compound nouns have non-interruptible characteristic, i.e., their constituents are
note interrupted by extraneous elements. This again confirms the assumption that a
compound is indeed a single lexical unit. For example, the compound blackbird
cannot be inserted extra elements as in the black naught bird which is a noun
phrase.
By modifications he means the use of other words to modify the meaning of a
compound. As a compound is a single unit, it can only be modified by other words
as a whole but cannot be modified independently each of its constituents.
Inflexibility is the use of inflections to present the grammatical function of
compound. To make the compound noun bottle-neck plural, for example, its
constituents cannot be inflected as bottles-necks. Instead, bottle-necks must be used.
Similarly, we have the other compound nouns in plural as ash-trays, dishwashers,
water paper baskets.
Semantically, most compounds tend to acquire special meanings like idiom. And
some authors take this special characteristic as their defining features: “If the
meaning of the whole cannot be deduced from the meaning of the elements
separately, then we have a compound” (Jesperson 1942:137). Each compound

conveys only one concept even though it may consist of more than two stems. Take
the word tallboy as an example; it does not denote a person, but a piece of furniture,
14


a chest of drawers supported by a low stand. Tallboy expresses only one concept
whereas a tall boy, a noun phrase, conveys two concepts: a young male person and
big in size.
Although all the criteria above seem to be convincing, it is insufficient to base on a
criterion alone, it is advisable to combine all three criteria to distinguish a
compound noun from a noun phrase.
2.3.3. Classification of compound noun
a. According to the meaning
In terms of meaning, a compound noun can be idiomatic or non-idiomatic.
Meaning of idiomatic compound is hardly deduced from the constituents’ meaning
such as blackbird, minute steak or butter-finger. Meanwhile, non-idiomatic
compound nouns are compound nouns of which meaning can be deduced from the
constituents, i.e. the meaning is the sum of its part and it can be guessed even they
are out of context. Some examples of non-idiomatic compound nouns are
doorkeeper, working man or dining table.
b. According to componential relationship
Compound nouns can be classified as coordinative or subordinative according to
componential relationship.
Coordinate compound nouns are compounds whose constituents are both
semantically and structurally independent. The constituents are often of the same
part of speech or of the same sematic group. Coordinate compound nouns are like
in these following examples: actor-manager, bye bye, or chitchat.
On the other hand, subordinative compounds are those that characterized by the
domination of one component over the other semantically or structurally. The
second component, which is also called the determenatum, is the structural center

and the dominant part of the word. The first component is called the determinant
which modifiers the second. For examples: honey-bee, oil well, table leg, piano
keys, pine tree, sandwich-man.
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c. According to the relation of the compound noun as a whole to its constituent
Jackson and Amvela states that compound nouns can be classified into two
different types, namely, endocentric and exocentric.
 Endocentric: is a type of compound in which one member functions as the head
and the other as its modifier, attributing a property to the head. “ Blackboard” is
considered as an endocentric in that it refers to a type of board.
 Exocentric: is a type of compound words where the thing that the compound
refers to is not the same as the head. “Pick-pocket” is an example of the
exocentric which refers to a kind of person not a kind of pick or a kind or
pocket.
3.

An overview of information technology

3.1. What is information technology?
Information technology (IT) is a general term that describes any technology that
helps to produce, manipulate, store, communicate and/or disseminate information.
According to Gay and Blades (2005),
Information Technology (IT) is the term used to describe the equipment,
hardware and computer programs (software) that allows us to access,
present data and information.
IT is the application of computers and telecommunications equipment to store,
retrieve, transmit and manipulate data, often in the context of a business or other
enterprise. In other words, IT refers to the creation, gathering, processing, storing,

protecting, presenting and dissemination of information using hardware, software
and telecommunication technology.
Many companies now have IT departments for managing the computers, networks,
and other technical areas of their businesses. IT jobs include computer
programming, network administration, computer engineering, Web development,
technical support, and many other related occupations. As the results, information
technology has become a part of our everyday lives.

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3.2. What are the main parts of information technology?
According to Senn (2004), two different parts of IT are computer technology and
communication technology.
Figure 1: The two main parts of information technology

3.2.1. Computer technology
The first component is computer which is an electronic device or flexible machine
that can accept data-raw facts, figures, processes, or manipulates, and convert it
into information. The computer is programmable, meaning that it all depends upon
what program it is using for performing a particular function.
 Classifications of computers:
Computer can be classified into four different types according to the size, speed
and cost. The four main types of computers includes Supercomputer, Mainframe
computer, Minicomputer and Microcomputer. The most powerful and the largest
computer is supercomputer which allows multiprocessing and lots of users to
access at the same time. Supercomputer is normally used for special tasks in
aerospace, satellite, chemical, electronics, weather forecasts and nuclear power
industries. Mainframe computer is designed to meet the needs of large
organization with large databases. Minicomputer is smaller than a mainframe

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