FEATURED NEOLOGISM:

My favourite neologism in German is Rodal, a term borrowed from Spanish in the railway domain. It emerged around 2020 to name a new type of running gear developed by a Spanish rolling stock manufacturer and introduced into the German railway sector. The term shows interesting features of adaptation, as it appears both as “Rodal” and in the compound form “Rodal-Fahrwerk”, with variation also found in the plural forms (Rodales / Rodale). This makes it a good example of how new technical concepts trigger terminological innovation in specialised languages.

Andrea Fernández Vivanco is a PhD researcher at the University of Salamanca specializing in terminology, with a particular focus on terminological neology in the context of new technologies. Her doctoral research examines terminological variation in the railway domain, comparing oral and written discourse across industry, research, and operational settings, and explores how emerging terminology can be managed and modeled for natural language processing applications. Her academic background in Translation and Interpreting, English Studies, and Conference Interpreting, together with her professional experience as a technical translator and interpreter, underpins her interest in how new concepts and technological advances shape specialized language and terminological innovation.