From exchange-traded futures to naked swaps, recent…ahem…innovations in the financial markets and planned regulatory changes to deal with the aftermath of some of these products have spawned a slate of new financial terms, neatly inventoried in a recent Reuters article.
Here is an example — handily, the article not only offers up a definition, but also a brief summary of the current regulatory context as related to the term:
Position limits – a cap or limit on the number of futures contracts that can he held in a particular commodity. The CFTC proposed in January a crackdown on excessive speculation in energy trading by restricting the holdings of big players. [ID:nCFTCREG]. It also is considering similar curbs in the metals arena. [ID:nN25212518]
Gensler, under mounting political pressure, has pledged to be more aggressive on position limits. But the industry has lobbied against them, and some of the five CFTC commissioners are worried limits could push speculators to unregulated or overseas markets.
Of course, translating these new financial terms can be tricky, and often involves substantial amounts of research. In the absence of adequate dictionaries, financial translators are scouring the latest financial press releases and articles, consulting and comparing publications by international economic organizations, and quite simply picking up the phone and leveraging their networks in the worlds of banking, finance, and government to ask “How do you say this?”. Now that’s innovation!
Have you encountered any novel terms on the financial markets? How have they been dealt with in your language?
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
In Spain, English terms are commonly used in financial texts, specially financial products and neologisms. Anyway, I prefer to add a short explanation to make them easier to understand.
a funny one turned up a few months back, we found “dark pools” being translated as “piscines obscures”. so far no viable alternative to the English has been adopted.
@ anne : I would suggest something like “alliances obscures” or “intérêts communs indéfinis”.
@ anne (still) : “regroupements sans objectif(s) clairement défini(s); (awaiting confirmation)…
@Anne @Laurent, I have seen “marchés occultes” and “pôles de liquidité dissimulés” or something to that effect. I don’t translate into French, so I am rarely confronted with this issue, but at some point wouldn’t you just say that the French financial industry press uses “dark pools” in English and leave it in English with an explanatory note if the text is for non-specialized readers?
@ Sara: this could well be… although “pooling” is sometimes rendered by “syndicalisation”, even if it is used mainly for banks.