What it is
Naturalization takes a borrowed item and makes it behave like a target word. The operation has two stages, and both are needed before the term is genuinely integrated: the form is first adjusted to the sound system and spelling conventions of the target language, and then to its morphology, so that the word can take target plurals, target inflections and target derivations without looking foreign in doing so.
Newmark set it out as the step immediately beyond transference. Where transference leaves the source form untouched, naturalization adapts it, first to the normal pronunciation of the target language and then to its normal morphology or word forms. The sequence matters: a term that has been respelled but still resists inflection is only half naturalized, and such half-integrated forms are exactly where usage remains unstable. Molina and Hurtado Albir describe the same operation as naturalized borrowing, contrasting it with pure borrowing, which leaves the item unaltered.
A terminological warning is unavoidable here. Franco Aixelá also uses "naturalization", but for something else entirely: in his scale of strategies for culture-specific items, naturalization is a substitution strategy in which a source cultural referent is replaced by one belonging to the target culture. That is a cultural operation, not a phonological or morphological one, and it sits under adaptation and cultural filtering in this collection. Secondary literature mixes the two senses regularly, so the framework should be named whenever the label is used.
When it applies
- A loan has entered general target usage and now needs to be written and inflected consistently rather than quoted as foreign.
- The source spelling would be unpronounceable or misleading under target reading rules, so retaining it obstructs the reader.
- The item must inflect: a plural, a case, a possessive or a derived verb is required, and the unadapted form cannot carry the affix.
- Target orthographic authorities or house conventions have already fixed an adapted spelling, in which case the choice has been made elsewhere.
Examples
FR>TR
- Source: chauffeur; coiffeur
- Target: şoför; kuaför
- Comment: Both stages are visible. The forms are respelled to match Turkish orthography, which is close to phonemic, and the results then inflect normally as Turkish nouns. Keeping the French spelling would have left the reader to guess at a pronunciation the target script does not encode.
EN>ES
- Source: leader
- Target: líder
- Comment: Molina and Hurtado Albir's category of naturalized borrowing. The written accent marks Spanish stress, and the word then takes a regular Spanish plural, líderes. Compare software, which the same language retained as a pure borrowing: whether a loan naturalizes is a fact about usage, not a property of the source word.
EN>NL
- Source: to download
- Target: downloaden
- Comment: Morphological naturalization without spelling change. The stem is untouched, but Dutch verb morphology applies in full, giving ik download and the past participle gedownload. The item is now a Dutch verb that happens to look English, which is the endpoint of the technique.
Watch out for
Naturalization is a report on usage before it is a decision, and the failure mode is inventing an adaptation that no one uses. A form the translator has adapted independently is a coinage wearing the clothes of an established loan, and it will read as an error rather than as a choice.
Two constraints apply in professional work. First, consistency within the text outranks consistency with any external authority: mixing an adapted and an unadapted form of the same term inside one document is a defect regardless of which form is preferable. Second, in names naturalization is generally not available. Personal and corporate names, and the names of institutions with a registered form, must be reproduced as they are registered, and adapting them to target spelling breaks the identity that makes the document usable. That restriction is what separates naturalization from transliteration, where a script change is unavoidable and the applicable convention decides the form.
References
- Newmark, P. (1988). A Textbook of Translation. London: Prentice Hall, pp. 81–82.
- Molina, L. & Hurtado Albir, A. (2002). "Translation Techniques Revisited: A Dynamic and Functionalist Approach." Meta 47(4), 498–512.
- Franco Aixelá, J. (1996). "Culture-specific Items in Translation." In R. Álvarez & M. C.-Á. Vidal (eds), Translation, Power, Subversion. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters, pp. 52–78, at pp. 61–64.