The terminology of cybersecurity and its metaphors

Resumen

This contribution studies the metaphorical terms present in the field of cybersecurity. Taking the analysis of a Spanish glossary on cybersecurity as a starting point, a set of around 80 metaphorical terms was identified. The equivalents of these terms in English (most likely the original language in which they were first coined), Spanish, French, Italian, and Catalan are compared. This research has allowed the identification of certain source domains that are particularly productive in this field. In addition, the cross-linguistic analysis has led to some observations about the trans-fer of metaphorical terms that originated in English into the four Romance languages under study. Our main objective is twofold: on the one hand, we aim at identifying some of the source domains that are particularly productive in the field of cybersecurity; on the other hand, we want to study whether metaphors are kept across languages and what is the impact of the source language and culture in which the new terms are originally coined (usually English) on the terminology in the languages that import them. To illustrate the different strategies followed, the equivalents of several terms in the five languages are contrasted to exemplify how metaphors are subject to sociocultural factors when a translation procedure is applied.