In recent days, the Real Academia Española (RAE) disclosed the incorporation of new terms into the new edition to be published in October, which will mark the grand culmination of the Academia’s third centennial.
Without a doubt, technological and cultural advances have led Spanish speakers to increasingly incorporate and adapt different terms to be able to name and describe various situations.
Thus, in line with these incorporations, the RAE has entered the homestretch of its new edition, which was submitted this past March 14 for revision. This great work will introduce words such as bótox, pilates and cameo. Likewise, it will include adapted words originating from terms that are widely used by Spanish speakers in the realm of IT, such as tuit (a tweet) and tuitear (to tweet). In fact, already by June 2012, the RAE had incorporated prominent words such as bloguero (blogger), friki (freaky), chat, espanglish (Spanglish), tableta electrónica (electronic tablet) and SMS.
They will also introduce a number of neologisms. For example, we can point to the political terms cortoplacismo (short-termism) and cortoplacista (short-termist). Another neologism is the term dron (drone), which is already adapted and means “unmanned aircraft.”
On the other hand, the RAE will also incorporate Americanisms into its new edition. For example, the word jonrón has been included, which comes from the English expression “homerun.” This word is widely used in countries such as Cuba and Venezuela, where baseball is a very popular sport.
This new version has already entered the edition and proofreading stages. Of course, the Academia will only introduce these changes once it considers that all the conditions have truly been given and considered.
Therefore, we must wait until August of this year for the final decision of the RAE regarding these incorporations. In the meantime, we translators must be alert and ready to take and assimilate these new words without hassle in order to ensure work that is successful, of a high quality, and in keeping with the latest developments in our language. This is beyond any doubt a sine qua non condition of our profession.
