The Real Academia Española has just added the English expression big data to the dictionary, among other terms, even though it has a simple and obvious translation into Spanish. What are the reasons behind this decision and others like it?

As has been happening in recent years every December, the Royal Spanish Academy (RAE), in partnership with the association of Academies of the Spanish language (ASALE), has published a new list of words and meanings that are included, from now on, in the common or official Dictionary of the Spanish language (DLE).

In general, these are words -simple or complex forms- that have been used for some time by speakers and are sufficiently documented in the instructions of data (such as the Corpus del Español del Siglo XXI) with which the Instituto de Lexicografía de la RAE works.

Among the recently incorporated foreign words, most of them Anglicisms, the English locution big data (literally "data big") has attracted special attention, due to the fact that, for some time now, several idiomatic instances have been proposing its equivalent Spanish macrodatos. What is the reason for this apparently incongruous academic decision, as well as many other equivalents?

The basic criterion for the RAE and ASALE to include a word in the DLE is that its use by speakers is sufficiently documented. If a dictionary is to be an instrument capable of resolving the idiomatic doubts of speakers, it has no choice but to record the words they use, and from there, they will be able to advise, with reasoned and consensual criteria, whether a particular word is the most suitable to satisfy this or that expressive need.

For this purpose, since the 2001 edition, the RAE has adopted the criterion of presenting in italics the so-called raw foreign words, such as big data, aquaplaning, banner, cookie, parkour or sexting, to name a few of the recently included ones. They have in common the fact that they are borrowings not adapted to the graphic-phonological patterns of Spanish, while the borrowings already adapted (or not in need of adaptation) are written in round: alien, eslogan, píxel, vedete...

In some of the raw foreign words, the Dictionary also records, written in round, the adapted form or the recommended Castilian form if they are sufficiently documented. This is precisely what it does, among others, in the case of big data, from whose entrance, in italics, it refers to the lemmas "macrodatos" and "inteligencia de data", written in round, forms to which it gives priority and whose use, consequently, it recommends.

And it is under these advised lemmas where the information regarding the corresponding meaning is detailed; respectively, "set of data that, due to their large volume, require special processing techniques" and "branch of computer science that deals with big data".

Something similar happens for the English acronym VAR (from video assistant referee, "árbitro asistente por video", which, on the other hand, is written in round so as not to contravene the graphic-phonic patron saint of Spanish): the resource is used to refer to the slogan "videoarbitraje", under which it is defined as "video system employee as financial aid to the referee, which allows to watch again a play that has just occurred".

Other foreign words or locutions (mostly English), written in italics, for which the Diccionario académico refers to Spanish forms are, for example, best seller (bestseller), cartoon (cartoon), coach (in sport, trainer), container (container), feedback (feedback, free lance (freelance), full time (full-time), grill (grill, gratinator), hardware (equipment), hobby (hobby, pastime), impasse (impasse, waiting time), jean (jeans), jeep (all-terrain vehicle), jet (jet), living (living room), marketing (marketing), sponsor (sponsor), etc.

But it must be said that the academic criterion, for these purposes, as well as for the graphic adaptation of crude foreign words to the usual pronunciation in Spanish, is far from being coherent.

A different matter is the inclusion of balconing, in italics, a specific Spanish word, to refer to the "internship of jumping into a hotel pool from the balcony or terrace of a room".

This is one more case of what we could call "false anglicisms", along the lines of other forms already recorded, also in italics, in the DLE, such as jogging (in English "position", but not jogging, also included in italics), camping (camping), leasing (leasing), parking (car park), puénting (risk sport that consists of jumping from a bridge or other high place, holding on to an elastic rope).

And, since we are already including these hybrid forms, why not open the doors of the DLE to cañoning (as an alternative to rafting, already included in previous editions), raft (balsa), penduling, cuerding, dancing, goming (elastic jump), pressing, vending, the last four of which are already included in the Diccionario del Español Actual (Dictionary of Current Spanish).

Finally, the recent update of the DLE also includes lexical units that are, for the most part, structural calques of foreign forms (simple or complex), such as no binary, corredor ecológico, delito de lesa humanidad o de lesa patria, disforia de género, fila cero, huella (de carbono, ecológica, Genetics, hídrica, satelital), identidad de género, identidad sexual, línea roja, menú del día, pobreza energética, refugio fiscal, rol de género, etc. In these cases what is received as loan is the meaning and the syntactic outline , while the signifier is created by the receiving language , Spanish in this case.

The addition of meanings, some of which are geographically restricted, is another of the increases that tend to come with DLE updates. Thus, for example, to the word ojota ("subject de chancla") is added the meaning, typical of Argentina and Uruguay, of "summer footwear that is fastened to the foot with one or two straps on the instep or between the toes".