Assignment

Pick up one or several Anglicisms that are circulated in cultural mass-media and
everyday speech. Analyse them such as exemplified below, with translation equivalence
if it has some relevance for your argumentation. In case you need more support for your
pragmatic work, you can read here my analysis of <hobby> and two associated notions,
<mall> and <shopping>, actually terms no longer subjected to translation into
Romanian.
Use the following title for your approach:

The presence of Anglicisms in Romanian culture. A look at the pragmatic context

(an example)
Let us make reference to hobby. The spare time recreational pursuits denoted by this
international term are understood as such worldwide. Maybe in Romania the term is
simplified when DEX defines it as favourite occupation outside a profession. It is
relevant that ‘hobbies’ for some people may be ‘professions’ for others. It is easy to
exemplify with cooking for a gourmand or a gourmet versus cooking for the chef of a
restaurant. Westerners are careful to point out that there is personal fulfilment in the
aims followed and there is no financial reward expected, at least theoretically. Two
notions come out as triggers of hobbies: on the one hand, someone’s intellectual
interest; on the other hand, someone’s sheer enjoyment of it. What can contradict such
initial emotions? It is frequent and understandable that your hobby may seem trivial or
boring to me and my hobby may seem non-entertaining and time-consuming to you.
Romanians enjoy hobbies that belong to artistic pursuits, sports and collecting. Upon
reflection, one may see a wider preoccupation of Romanians in our day with ‘animal-
related’ hobbies (keeping pet animals and even keeping show animals), ‘amateur
science-related’ hobbies (astrology) and ‘do-it-yourself’ (interior repairs and design).
Abroad, the range is vaster, unexpectedly going under the umbrella term of ‘adult
education’ or, to give another example of expansion, under the label ‘political
commitment’. That is why it is significant enough to remember that hobbies may very
well develop into other ventures. The Internet gives us an example in point. In older
times, interest in nature was not believed or perceived to be a hobby. However, when
this became the germ of the conservation movement that flourished in Britain, first of all,
from 1965 onwards, within a generation, the credibility of this hobby increased to the
point of turning it into a global political movement. As a result, we already have a long
list of synonyms for these ‘hobbyists’: greens, environmentalists, conservationists,
preservationists, nature-lovers, eco-activists, etc. Investigating the quality of Romanian
spare time, the conclusion reached by an institute (Institutul de Cercetare a Calităţii
Vieţii) a few years ago was that, when compared to other European nations, the
Romanians have less free time (work is on the increase) with fewer pursuits and poorer
ideas about diversifying them. The causes for that might not be so much a low lifestyle
as their customs and frame-of-mind. Asked what their wishes might be if they were to
dispose of more leisure, 31% of respondents claimed hours for a good rest. They also
wanted to dedicate themselves more to family and friends, as simple as that. I
reproduce from the final sentence of an article in Dilema Veche (no. 178/2007, p. 11):
„[…] nu prea mai ai, de fapt, timp liber (numai al tău), nici măcar la sfârşit de
săptămână, fiind prea ocupat cu team-building-uri, training-uri, workshop-uri, party-uri
aniversare şi alte asemenea delicii corporatiste, toate cu denumiri de import.” From the
concept of indulging in a hobby, a Romanian will easily reconsider the necessary activity
of shopping as falling under this title; we will further expand on this fake hobby to some
length, as long as shopping mania is a ‘vice’ asumed by our conationals with airs of self-
indulgence and the mall is a favourite destination for hobby-adepts. Mall in WEUD
(1996, Webster’s Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary of the English Language. New
York: Gramercy Books) is only explained as “a large area, usually lined with shade trees
and shrubbery, used as a public walk or promenade” (p. 868). ODT (2001: 787, Oxford
Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide. Catherine Soanes (ed.), Oxford
University Press) indicates it to be “a large, enclosed shopping area from which traffic is
excluded” and this explanation suits better the application given to this term by
Romanians who casually speak about a merge la mall. One further gets to know that in
the city of X „a mai apărut un mall pe piaţa de retail (!)” and „un mall pentru amenajarea
căruia s-au cheltuit […] a fost deschis la […]”. There is also a possibility to be informed
that there has come a new “mall online” (translatable as magazin virtual), in a word one
can safely equate for Romanians the word mall with the syntagm shopping centre. We
Romanians have the promenade inside the multi-storey building, and trees or traffic are
inappropriately invoked in a local definition of mall. Grammatically, the plural malluri is
accepted and recommended (mall is a ‘newcomer’ in DOOM, second edition, p. 462).
Relatedly, shopping (sometimes misspelt for neglecting the double consonant) is a
provider for tv titles. In an odd way, the creators of some titles seem to have felt that two
words in English is overdoing it. So, we exemplify with „Shopping-ul, pasiunea mea”
(Euforia channel) and we wonder that one cannot equally use „Cumpărăturile, hobby-ul
meu”. One understands that, in Romanian circulation, the dictionary entry does not
cover basic shopping needs, but an extravagant activity of examining high-quality
goods, with much enthusiasm, dedication and expertise! In this case, shopping could
become in Romanian (yet it does not) „febra cumpărăturilor de fiţe”, whereas shopping
around is „a lua pulsul pieţii” (Gheorghiţoiu A., 1996: 165, Dicţionar englez-român de
verbe cu particulă adverbială, Bucureşti: Teora). Mania is already a clue about a
diseased mind, although the English use refers to excitement. The intriguing fact about
the root shop is that it comes out from DEX (1998) as the carrier of an outdated
communist application of meaning, namely „magazin în care se vând mărfuri cu plata în
valută”. It is outrageous that two and a half decades after the anticommunist upheaval
and in full free-market policies, the reference to the restrictional currency trade should
survive!