General Aspects on the Business Environment and Useful Terminology

Introduction

Economics is part of our life, either we are students at the Faculty of Languages, a banker or a simple tax payer, we all deal with economics, some of as more aware than others of this aspect. For instance, although I study languages, I confront myself with economics in my day-to-day life; I must bear in mind the financial responsibilities I have to meet, such as paying a rent. Although I am not an economist, I must keep track of some economic factors such as currency, depreciation of the Romanian national currency due to inflation or other factors. Or, at a certain point we all depend on banks and the services they provide, we must be aware of the maturity date for paying instalments, the interest we are charged on loans and so on.

This field is not totally unknown to me as I got familiarized with it from a linguistic point of view by studying it for a semester. Because a semester is not enough to cover such a large field, I chose to elaborate my paperwork around the business domain, namely to focus on companies, in order to enrich my vocabulary with specific terms of this domain. This choice is also related to the fact that, on entering the labour market, by getting a job in a multinational company, the research for this paper may be a useful tool to learn more about the business environment. As a consequence the purpose of this paper, as the title suggests, is to bring into light a part of the English terminology used in business.

The core of the paper is represented by the business entities and I try to focus on the classification of business entities according to the type of ownership, to present the general aspects each business entity implies, and to also focus on the key departments and the financial institutions companies rely on for different purposes. In addition to the theoretical aspects of the points above mentioned, the paper provides useful terminology for each chapter in bilingual mini-dictionaries.

General Aspects on the Business Environment and Useful Terminology is organised in four chapters covering some key features of companies, completed by a mini-dictionary providing terms of economics, which appear in the corpus of the paper, or are related to that specific topic developed in the chapter, their English definition and the Romanian Equivalent of each term. The glossaries’ aim is to help the reader understand easily the terminology used in the paper.

The first chapter is called Legal Forms of Business Organizations and focuses on the business entities. I will refer to the English business entities, as well as to the Romanian ones. The chapter begins with a short introduction on the evolution of business through history, referring especially to the key moments in the development of the English business field. The business entities will be identified further on, on the basis of a classification according to the type of ownership. Words like sole proprietorship, partnership, public limited companies or trusts, are often used in the first chapter as I try to define each business entity, to compare them according to their characteristics. Corporate objectives is a subchapter which reveals the objectives a firm may have and the last part of this firs chapter focuses on the Romanian business entities and the differences between them.

The second chapter, Companies from Raising Capital to Liquidation, brings into light the stages a company faces through its life, highlighting the steps to be followed in order to set up firm, the means of raising capital, the importance of shares, bonds and borrowings in raising funds, etc. Further on, once a company has begun its activity, it is subject to corporate taxation and I will talk about corporate tax and expanses which are tax deductible. Unfortunately, business is not a secure field, because factors which may interrupt its activity may influence its performance. As a consequence, the last part of the chapter is designated to defining terms such as liquidation, winding up or bankruptcy, as well as the procedure which needs to be followed in such cases.

The third chapter, Business Accountancy and Financial Reports refers to the most important department of a company, the accountancy department, dealing with the activities afferent to this department. Beginning with a short introduction on the appearance of accountancy, the chapter also contains concepts such as financial and management accounting, balance sheet, account, accounting plan, defining these concepts and giving a general presentation of the accounting activity and its importance to companies. I approach the accounting field by focusing on the general accounting principles, on the chart of accounts used in financial accounting submitted both in Romanian and English, on the key entries in the balance sheet such as assets and liabilities. A classification and description of assets and liabilities is also included in the chapter. In order to complete the chapter, in the last part I will talk about audit and the influence of auditors on companies.

Banking Services and Means of Payment is the last chapter. I chose to talk about banks, because they are a very important entity of the external environment of businesses. Business could not exist without banks, they are vital to the well performance of companies thanks to the services they provide such as carrying out transactions, or offering borrowings. The chapter commences with a classification of banks and continues with the services they provide. In this part, terms such as current accounts, cheques, credit cards or pledges and liens will be defined. Further, I will focus on the means of payment available through banks by highlighting some of the most important means of payment used in local, as well as in international banking. The terminology to this chapter will be further on presented and explained in the glossary afferent to the Banking chapter.

This paper provides general features of the business environment by combining the theoretical aspects on the topics presented herein, with the useful terminology for each chapter.