ABC OF MILITARY LANGUAGE IN MEDIA: TRANSLATION OF MILITARY ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

2025

Full text Open access: Gold Metadata (CSL-JSON)
DOI 10.52301/2957-5567-2025-4-2-76-88
Data confidence 70 medium
How this score is calculated

It is built from checkable properties of the record itself: whether the article has a DOI, how many independent sources confirmed its data, whether the required fields are filled in, and how recent the latest confirmation is. Disagreement between sources and a missing identifier lower it. A value of 80 or above means the record was published without further checking; 60 to 79 means it is published at reduced confidence, with a manual check advisable. A record verified by an editor by hand is never pushed below 90 by a recalculation. This scores our data about the article, not the article itself.

Abstract

This study examines the translation challenges and techniques used for military abbreviations and acronyms in international media coverage of conflicts. The research identifies key patterns in abbreviation types and translation methods by analyzing 286 military abbreviations collected from diverse sources, including news outlets, military publications, and academic journals between 2019–2024. The study found that initialisms comprise the majority (75.87%) of military abbreviations, followed by acronyms (11.88%), syllabic abbreviations (7%), and alphanumeric combinations (5.24%). Six primary translation techniques were evaluated, with calque (43.7%) and modulation (25.5%) emerging as the most frequently employed methods. The research reveals challenges in translating NATO terminology to non-NATO languages, military rank equivalencies across different armed forces, and technical military nomenclature. Results indicate that successful translation requires linguistic expertise and a deep understanding of military contexts, organizational structures, and cultural nuances. The findings demonstrate that evolving warfare technology and terminology necessitate adaptive translation approaches. This study contributes to understanding how military abbreviations impact communication effectiveness in international media coverage of conflicts and highlights the importance of context-aware translation strategies for accurate information dissemination