New Terms in English-Russian Translation: a Case Study of Blockchain Terminology

This thesis investigates the new terminology that has recently emerged in the Russian language as a result of the rapid development of blockchain and cryptocurrency technologies. Among the crucial values of Blockchain is that it offers technological foundation for Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs) – new investment practices based on cryptocurrency. As a completely new field of knowledge, blockchain has prompted the formation of new words for previously nonexistent concepts. This process bears a chaotic character, since the words are mainly borrowed from English by blockchain specialists who are not language specialists or professional translators. The vocabulary is therefore inconsistent and includes synonyms, homonyms and ambiguous terms. Apart from translation difficulties, such non-unified terminology entails numerous risks of misunderstanding, including ambiguity in the legal dimension and the loss of investment attractiveness of the projects involving blockchain. To solve these problems, the study proposes a unified English-Russian glossary of blockchain-related terms which can serve as reference for translators and interpreters, as well as any others readers who are interested in blockchain and cryptocurrencies. The material for the glossary was collected from primary sources (texts of whitepaper documents used in the ICOs), as well as secondary ones (English-Russian glossaries created by blockchain insiders and bloggers).