Abbreviations/Acronyms and Neologisms in English and French WhatsApp Communication: A Comparative Study and Implications for Translation

Since the invention of the Internet in 1962 when J. C. R Licklider of MIT presented the first recorded description of the social interactions that could be enabled through networking in his Galactic Network concept, what has come to be known as social media has gained a lot of prominence and momentum in the dissemination of information. Prior to the dawn of the Internet age other communication tools like the telegraph, telephone, radio, and computer had served as precursors. A tool of immeasurable capabilities, the Internet is also a medium for collaboration and interaction between individuals and their computers without regard for geographic location. Other social media tools that have boarded this 20 th Century information superhighway wagon include Yahoo co-founded by Jerry Yang and David Filo in 1994, Facebook co-founded mainly by Mark Zuckerbeg in 2004, Twitter by Jack Dorsey in 2006, WhatsApp by Jan Koum and Brian Acton in 2009 and Instagram by Kevin Systrom in 2010. Our focus in this paper is on the use of WhatsApp as a social media tool. Adjudged one of the fastest and easiest to use, people of all walks of life have taken full advantage of it. Our aim in this paper is to examine how it has impacted on the use of English and French by Anglophones and Francophones in Nigeria and Cameroon so far as neologisms and abbreviations are concerned. Our approach which is comparative in nature has as its principal tenet the implications for translation to and from the two languages involved in this study.