Strategic Use of English in Online Romanian Banking Advertising

The focus on the present paper is on the strategic use of terms, expressions of English origin (anglicisms) in the process of advertising certain banking services on the online Romanian banking market. The reasons for the presence of English terms can vary from necessity in the case when a term is too international so as not to be mentioned in the respective advertising message to the touch of prestige that a term/expression can give to the content in which they appear. Although it may seem a very ambitious objective, taking into account the fact that this issue has been far too little tackled upon, by means of this article we are trying to raise awareness of the impact that the presence (or in some cases the abundance) of such English terms may ultimately have upon (Romanian) bank clients as well as to offer variants of translation of several banking anglicisms that have “comfortable†Romanian correspondents. The theoretical background of our research is supported by a large number of Romanian banking advertising messages that can be found on the websites of the respective banks. In order to obtain the “pulse†of the bank customer market we have chosen to survey 200 1st year students within the Bucharest University of Economic Studies on the use of English terms in online advertisements of student programmes and bank cards offered by nine important banks in Romania. Ultimately, we think that the great merit of our research is that it manages to signal and study the subliminal and very delicate, but potentially beneficial connection between Romanian banking businesses and the linguistic implications of their online advertising messages containing English terms/expressions.