Criteria for translating into English is the subject of the subsection
Translation, but there are two important points to be made about using abbreviations in our multilingual institutional context.
First, if you need to provide English versions of the full names of university offices or government institutions, do not translate their abbreviations. For example, the English name of a university office called the
Oficina de Programes Internacionals (OPI) would be the
Office for International Programmes (OPI). And the English names of the
Diari Oficial de la Generalitat de Catalunya, the
Diari Oficial de la Generalitat Valenciana and the
Boletín Oficial del Estado would be the
Official Journal of the Government of Catalonia (DOGC), the
Official Journal of the Government of Valencia (DOGV) and the
Official Gazette of the Government of Spain (BOE), respectively.
Second, a number of very frequent abbreviations in Catalan-speaking universities come from common noun phrases that have no official English equivalent (
PTGAS from
personal tècnic, de gestió i d’administració i serveis,
PDI from
personal docent i investigador,
SED from
secretaria d’estudiants i docència and
PAT from
pla d’acció tutorial). In these cases, explain or paraphrase the full term the first time it occurs in a text and then use only the Catalan abbreviation for the rest of the text. This way, English-language readers can be more effectively helped to understand their non-English institutional environment.
![Exemple adequat Exemple adequat](grafics/exemple-correcte.png) | Last year, our university’s technical, management, administrative and service staff (personal tècnic, de gestió i d’administració i serveis, or PTGAS) took advantage of the Erasmus+ programme to travel to over 20 different European destinations. A number of PTGAS members also completed courses in the US and in Canada. |