Language Value
December 2019, Volume 11, Number 1 pp. 23-44
Copyright © 2019, ISSN 1989-7103
Difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching
medical translation and methods to overcome them when
teaching medical English to future translators
Anna Kuzio
Uniwersytet Zielonogórski, Poland
ABSTRACT
Active cooperation and international exchange of experience in the field of medicine and health care are
being employed in the contemporary world. In this regard, the application of quality translation of
medical records is of great significance. This paper discusses problems related to the translation of
medical terms from English into Polish, taking language diversity into account. It applies an evaluation
approach to investigate and discuss the issues and complexities of translating medical terms from English
into Polish. The purpose of the study is to present the various linguistic difficulties related to the
translation of medical terms and the way in which students in a medical translation course deal with them.
The study used qualitative and quantitative approach to evaluate the significance of the potential problem.
It concentrates on various types of medical terms. The findings of the analysis of the data revealed that
the translation of medical terms posed real challenges and difficulties to students who face difficulties
while rendering medical terms from English into Polish that seems to be the main problem in translating
medical texts.
Keywords: Medicine, medical discourse, teaching medical translation, language diversity
I. INTRODUCTION
Nowadays, medical translation is a highly specialized industry that plays a key role in
the distribution of medical knowledge and results of medical research, in the
cooperation of the international scientific community and in introducing new medical
products, services and technologies to the market. For these reasons, those individuals
who choose this type of activity are required to meet numerous, very diverse quality
standards.
The terms “medicine” and “translation” are too broad and multi-faceted for any of their
definitions to qualify for a comprehensive and consistent interpretation of each of them.
Yet, “medical translation” refers to the process and outcome of the complete, detailed
transmission of health information expressed in one language through equivalent text or
speech in another language
(Smith
2011:
135). Currently, medical translation is
frequently referred to as special types of scientific, technical or technological translation
Copyright © 2019 Language Value, ISSN 1989-7103
23
Articles are copyrighted by their respective authors
Anna Kuzio
(Eck et al. 2004, Byrne 2006: 18). In this respect, it is commonly believed that a
medical translator should be a medical specialist (Olle ten Cate et al. 2010: 669). At the
same time, from a different point of view, the main activity of a medical translator is to
translate from one language to another, and such activity requires special knowledge in
the field of translation studies and linguistics as a whole (Montalt and González-Davies
2014: 20, Shyiab et al. 2010: 100).
Translation activities entail the application of knowledge and skills that are not intended
to be specifically targeted in the course of study of medical specialties. Equally, the
knowledge gained in translation and translation studies does not involve understanding
of even the basics of medical science. Systematic development of the combination of
skills involves special training so it is crucial to offer the possibility to non-medical
professionals to gain that opportunity. It is important to equip future translators with
those skills as they are to offer the translation services in the future to a wide audience.
Moreover, literature resources have not shown any verified data on the number of
philologists and doctors among those employed in the field of medical translation, but it
can be assumed that, despite the relatively large number of philologists and linguists,
physicians prevail among medical translators. However, when talking about medical
translation as an industry, it should be kept in mind that this is mainly translation in
medical discourse, i.e. the possession of specific translation skills is not only desirable,
but also necessary for the qualitative performance of functional duties. Insufficient
proficiency in one's native language, which is most frequently the language of
translation, is often a problem (Pöchhacker and Shlesinger 2007). Surprisingly, but
often seeing the way to success in foreign languages, young professionals spend a
significant amount of time and effort studying the grammar and vocabulary of a foreign
language (Wakabayashi 1996: 358-359), and as a result, write, for example, in English
even more competently than in Polish. In the process of translation, a medical translator
does not always pay adequate attention to the accuracy of translation, often
hyperbolizing it as a literal translation of absolutely all terms (Newmark 1976: 12) and
expressions found in the source text, which is detrimental to the natural use of the
translation language and complicates the perception of the text by the customer (Kuhn
et al. 2007: 820, Crezee and Ng 2016: 13). The opposite situation is also possible: due
to their high professional level in the field of original text, a medical translator allows
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Difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome
them when teaching medical English to future translators
himself to ‘creatively rethink’ some of its ‘insignificant’ moments, which can lead to
distortion of the translation result
(Ji et al.
2019: 103-104). The abovementioned
disadvantages are deprived of linguistic specialists who studied translation studies,
understood the goals and objectives, and possessed skills and knowledge of the means
of translation. At the same time, they still face the problem of redundancy and
synonymity of medical terminology (Cimino 1998: 42), as well as the mismatch
between the medical descriptive systems adopted in the original language and culture
and those employed by the target translation (Sousa and Rojjanasrirat 2011: 267).
Translation of eponyms and medical abbreviations is particularly problematic (it should
be noted, for the sake of fairness, that translators with basic medical education also face
a comparable problem) (Sloane 1985). Linguists’ difficulties are also related to the
peculiarities of the use of medical vocabulary in the occasional use of medical
vocabulary, as well as to the insufficiency of their existing base of medical phraseology
(Fischbach 1998: 87, Shiyab et al. 2010: 106). Of course, there are also ways to
overcome this problem. For this purpose, a linguist has to master medical terminology
(Dubrovskaya and Lobina 2015: 123), structure and peculiarities in the formation of
medical terms, peculiarities of their pronunciation and use, to study the ‘false friends of
the translator’ in the medical text (Kuzmina et al. 2015: 549), the main peculiarities of
the structure and functioning of the human body, and the peculiarities of formation of
the names of medicines, procedures etc. (Wright and Budin 2001: 697). In general, the
acquisition of such a significant amount of information requires a considerable amount
of time and effort, as well as systematic training, which is not possible to discuss due to
the limited availability of specialized educational programs in this paper.
The availability of complete professional education in both medicine and in linguistics,
taking into account of the aspect of high standard in this domain, at first glance appears
to be an ideal combination for the formation of professional competence of a medical
translator. The most effective option is to train a specialist in the field of ‘translation in
the field of professional communication’ with professional orientation in the field of
medical knowledge. It is crucial to identify the linguistic elements that will constitute
the part of that training. The aim of this paper is to show how linguistic diversity can
contribute to potential difficulties and how they can be overcome while teaching
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medical English to future translators. Moreover, it is important to show which areas can
pose potential problems to translators when it comes to their linguistic aspects.
II. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND
Translation is a complex and multifaceted activity that requires a great deal of human
effort (González Davies 2004: 11). The main requirement for translation is accuracy
(Darwish 2010: 42) and completeness (Hung 2002: 182). None of the author’s ideas
should be omitted or misrepresented (Castro et al. 2017: 131). The consequences of a
change in the meaning of the original source may vary depending on the type of
translation and may be up to the point of causing harm to a person, for example, when it
comes to translation in medicine. Modern translation theory has not yet developed a
single definition of translation as a language activity (Gentzler 2001: 1). One of the
definitions of translation is the following: “Translation is a complete transfer by means
of one language of communication, formulated in another (Millán and Bartrina 2013:
261). The aspect of “completeness” of information transmission in the process of
translation also appears to be crucial from the point of view concerning rendering
meaning (Gambier and van Doorslaer 2010: 97). By expert opinion, full translation of
the medical text has completely different characteristics than a full translation of the
journalistic text (Trosborg 1997: xii). The “fullness” is not so much a linguistic, as an
extra-linguistic, pragmatic property of translation, as it is provided only when taking
into account such factors as the real situation of communication, the relative socio-
cultural communities of the communicating individuals (Malmkjær 2008: 51).
The global processes of the 21st century pose new challenges for medicine, which
require the development of professional skills and abilities. This is impossible without
close cooperation and exchange of experience at an international level. The main goals
of teaching foreign language in a medical university are teaching professionally oriented
reading, formation of the ability to extract necessary information from the scientific text
depending on the communicative task of the specialist, and also conducting
conversation on specialized topics (Strop and Carlson 2011: 87, Antic 2007: 142).
Development of the ability to read and understand the original literature in the specialty
is determined by the need to obtain information from foreign sources and is reflected in
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Difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome
them when teaching medical English to future translators
foreign language programs (Antic 2007: 142-143). Knowledge of foreign languages,
including medical English, helps doctors to be constantly aware of events in the field of
medicine, to get acquainted with modern literature in English.
The basis of the medical language is the terminology describing the state of the
organism, medicines and their impact on people, technologies used in treatment, and
much more, which is found in special publications, the content of which is related to
human health. Such texts, which need to be translated, can be of any level of complexity
and can involve various types of texts: an abstract from a medical history, protocols of
diagnostic examinations and operations performed, results of laboratory tests,
information for patients and/or doctors, instructions on the use of medicines, treatment
recommendations, etc. Taking these aspects into account, it is important to pay attention
to translation competence. Translation competence is often perceived in translation
literature as an additional skill (Pellatt et al. 2010: 177). Kielar (2007:19) states that it is
“the ability to form in target linguistic texts that are equivalent to the original texts” or
as Grucza (2004: 250) mentions it is “the ability to move from L1 to L2, to pass the
same content in the original translation and text.” Pamela Faber (2012: 3) believes that
the comprehension of the source text terminology is very crucial factor in the process of
translating, the creating of the terms’ target language counterparts is of equivalent, if
not, greater significance.
The main place in modern translation studies is occupied by the linguistics studies in the
field of translation. As any scientific discipline, modern translation studies were
developed by scientists from many countries. Much of the merit in this field is attributed
to the national science in this field (Kerner and Hall 2009, Gea Valor et al. 2010).
Medical translation and the translation of pharmaceutical texts are highly specialized
types of translation, which requires a translator who not only speaks the relevant foreign
language, but also possesses knowledge of the special terminology of the text to be
translated (Trosborg 1997: 159). Characteristic features of contemporary medicine are
the increasing number of narrow specialties, the emergence of new treatment options
and the development of specialized equipment and materials. Correspondingly, the
requirements for the qualification of an interpreter are constantly growing (Ozolins
2010: 198). It is significant for the translator to be conscious of, and to be trained in
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coping with, the technical terms that he/she encounters in translating technical texts. In
this regard, García-Sánchez (2010: 186) proposes that training in technical translation is
a crucial criterion to help technical translators so the aspect of training students
concerning medical translation should be treated as an obvious.
Over the last several decades, the translation of medical texts in combinations of two
languages in which one of the languages is English has been studied in detail.
Translations highlight several major problems in translating medical texts. For example,
the Quebec linguist Rouleau (203:143-152) has identified six main problems in English
and French: 1) peculiarities of use, including the metonymic use of terms and the
preferred use of certain parts of speech; 2) variability of terminology; 3) terminological
synonyms; 4) problems of translating eponyms; 5) discrepancy of affixes in general
words;
6) insufficiently high quality of specialized bilingual and multilingual
dictionaries. Rask (2004: 16-17) points out the following problems on the basis of
Swedish-English translations:
1) insufficient standardization of terminology,
2) the
acceptability of the use of Anglicisms in the translated text, 3) difficulties in translating
eponyms, and 4) differences in the organization of the health care system in different
countries. Lee-Jahnke (2001: 145-153) suggests a classification of medical translation
difficulties applicable to any pairs of languages:
1) terminological problems;
2)
translation difficulties; 3) difficulties in translating eponyms; 4) acceptability of the use
of Anglicisms; 5) peculiarities of the compatibility of language units and text structure
The classification of medical translation distinguishes between written and spoken
translation, as well as any other translation (Montalt 2014: 333). Translation is provided
by professional, semi-professional and native speakers of languages for which the
nature of the situation, the specific education of the communication and mastery of
terminology are crucial taking into account the specific education of the translator as
well as the specific knowledge of the communication (Montalt 2014: 333). Professional
level is characterized by the use of certain lexical units and syntactic constructions,
which are also characteristic for written medical translation. This is the language of
conferences, symposiums, presentations, reports, etc. At the semi-professional level
(doctor-patient communication), the efficiency of communication is reduced by the fact
that one of its participants is not a member of the medical profession, and, accordingly,
barriers to communication are established, among which are: semantic, communicative,
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Difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome
them when teaching medical English to future translators
psychological, cultural, stylistic. These differences may result in creating language
diversity that can contribute to the development of the coherent and cohesive
translation.
Taking the abovementioned issues into account, one should be aware that language
diversity greatly contributes to the whole translation process. Precision in scientific and
technical translations
(STTs) is both essential and important, particularly in this
'technological era', but they are not easy to obtain. The transfer of information and
technology from one language to another is restricted by many limitations, since each
language has its own characteristics, such as grammatical and lexical properties and
cultural aspects. These are barriers for translators and readers of such texts (Cronin
2003: 47). Furthermore, each language has a tendency to change over time. Changes
here indicates that some words can be substituted by other similar or different words,
new words are implemented to the language, and some words have established, or
denote, different meanings. This kind of modification occurs because of changes in
human culture and communities and it also affects the process of translation and
medical discourse (Trask 1994:1). The aspect of equivalence can also result in some
problems that a translator has to face. Moreover, this aspect seems to be an integral part
of language diversity that can affect the final shape of the translated text. A translator’s
failure to accomplish a suitable equivalent translation can give rise to a mistranslation
which may be misleading in most fields but which can be ‘dangerous’ in the field of
medicine (Baker and Saldanha 2009). Problems of equivalence occur at various levels,
ranging from word to the textual level. Neologisms are very common in medical
terminology mainly for the names of diseases as they spread very fast throughout the
world and each language needs to have counterparts for them very quickly (Montalt and
Gonzalez 2007: 230), e.g. in some situations functional-descriptive terms are employed
to name new diseases as it was with the term ‘swine flu’ that was introduced in 2009.
Correspondingly, some acronyms and abbreviations can result in a problem of
polysemy, as they are not exclusive and some abbreviations or acronyms can have
diverse meanings. Montalt (2011) claims that abbreviations and acronyms are causes of
polysemy, e.g. the medical abbreviation CF can have about 15 possible meanings.
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Taking into account the concept of language diversity and the pace of changes in
medical discourse, one should realize that language diversity is an integral part of
teaching medical translation. Translations of scientific and technical terms ought to be
updated as many terms come in languages over time and some become no longer in
usage or are substituted by other terms. Language diversity includes meaning and
language change which pose some of the problems to medical translators.
III. METHODOLOGY
III.1. Statement of the problem
Medical translation requires a high degree of consistency and accuracy in the transfer of
the source text to the target language (TL). The translation of medical terms generally
poses many challenges. While some medical terms can be translated without any
difficulties, others are very difficult to translate. One of the things that can make the
translation of some medical terms into English more difficult is their complex structure,
e.g. hypergammaglobulinemia. Furthermore, there are medical complex terms and
abbreviations (which may be vague) that make it hard for an unexperienced translator to
grasp, such as the central nervous system (CNS).
It can sometimes be problematic for translators to cope with these structures in English,
which can lead to incorrect translations (Montalt and González-Davies 2014: 168).
Moreover, there are problems of ambiguity because many English terms are either new
or so technical that inexperienced translators cannot comprehend their meaning in
source language (SL) (ibid.).
The problems of various types of equivalence and differences in Polish medical terms
for the same English medical term may appear to be unavoidable because of different
factors. There are different translation phrases that operate independently, as unitary
expressions in the Polish world (Baker and Saldanha 2009). The use of competing
resources is regarded as one of the main causes for the multiplicity of concepts, which is
mirrored by the terminological inconsistency resulting from the lack of standardization.
All this highlights the significance of translator education that leads to the development
of their capacity to work in the field of medicine.
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Difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome
them when teaching medical English to future translators
To summarize, the study will demonstrate that the translation of medical terms is
difficult because some medical terms have complex structures and may give rise to
different semantic, lexical and grammatical interpretations that make translating very
difficult. A second reason is that there is a lack of clarity or because of ambiguity which
may be due to certain medical terms or expressions in SL, which in turn has a great
influence on the translation process.
III.2. Aim of the study
The current paper aims to analyse a specific translation problem, i.e., medical terms.
The study examines the problems that Polish students of translation majors may face
while translating English medical terms into their mother tongue. The following are the
research aims:
1. Rendering medical terms from English into Polish seems to be the main problem
in translating medical texts.
Hervey et al.
(1995:
155) mention that people have many problems with
terms that are not used in ordinary language, which are, thus, unfamiliar to the
translator. As a result, translators cannot guess the precise meaning of
the term or make a reliable guess at its correct TL rendering and this is typical
for medical terminology which often pose problems to translators who are not
trained in this specific field.
2. It is essential to train future translators in the medical field before they start
working in their profession.
Sofer (2011: 90) believes that all prospective translators should acquire some
knowledge of the medical field in advance.
3. Since neologism, lack of equality, polysemy and terminological incoherence
present significant translation problems, the aim of the study is to work out
strategies to help the future translators to deal with these difficulties.
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Anna Kuzio
Montalt and González Davies (2007: 248) also mention that the challenges faced
by medical translators can be found in the following fields, namely terminology,
neologisms and polysemy.
III.3. Population and the sample of the study
The starting point for the analysis in this paper is the course entitled 'The English
language in medicine', which is taught to students of English philology at the Bachelor's
level. The course is not required but selective. Students decide on their own whether to
participate in the course, which is partially expected to be consistent with their interests,
and thus it can be assumed that students will have some kind of background in medical
knowledge.
About 20% of the university students decide to enrol in this course, which consists of 15
classes (30 contact hours) per semester. Students usually do not have formal education
in medicine and generally do not know much about it, although they are expected to
show an interest in the subject when choosing this course.
The course is aimed primarily at students of the translation major in order to gain
theoretical insights into how teaching medical translation differs from teaching foreign
languages and teaching English to medical students.
The texts examined include material from students who participated in the survey from
2017 to 2019. The number of students who attended the classes in those years amounted
to 61 (18 men and 43 women). The age of the course participants, who are 1st and 2nd
year students of M.A. level, was between 21-25, indicating C1 level of proficiency;
those students were involved in the translation major at the B.A. level
The analysis was based on the written pieces of work delivered by students, which
included translating medical documents and medical texts from English into Polish as
well as standard translating tasks asking students to provide the equivalent in the given
language. Only translations prepared by individuals were used for the study, though
sometimes students worked in teams but these team projects were not included in the
analysis. Problems that appeared in translations prepared by individuals were also
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Difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome
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repeated in translations prepared by the groups. This shows that problems arising from
linguistic diversity are a challenging issue at every stage of the translation process.
Validity and reliability have been assured. All examples of medical texts were taken
from officially valid and reliable sources, which were easily accessible to the researcher
from websites.
III.4. Data Analysis and Discussion
The following table summarizes the findings of the student translators' responses. It
indicates that 51.7% of them were acceptable translations, namely translations that were
believed to be coherent and cohesive in terms of style and lexical choice made by the
translators. Unacceptable translations accounted for 43.7% and 8.8% were blank, which
indicates that participants did not give any response. Unacceptable translations (43.7%)
reflected the difficulty experienced in this field. This result is significant as it predicts
difficulties in translating into English, as well as problems in translating into Polish. The
fifteen examples will be analysed in turn exemplifying the different kinds of problems
linked to the translation of each of them. These examples show the general tendencies
observed in rendering translation of medical terms.
Table 1. Percentage Results of the Translations of Medical Term
No.
Term
Acceptable
Unacceptable
Blank
Raw score
%
Raw score
%
Raw score
%
1
Outpatient appointment
42
69
9
15
10
16
2
Orthotic appointment
7
12
47
77
7
12
3
Meningococcal diseases
15
25
42
69
4
6
4
Thalassaemia
38
62
20
33
3
5
5
Aspiration
8
13
47
77
6
10
6
Demyelinating neuropathy
12
20
41
67
8
13
7
SARS
60
98
-
-
1
2
8
Paediatrician
59
96
1
2
1
2
9
Haemophilia B
53
87
5
8
3
5
10
African trypanosomiasis
12
20
44
72
5
8
11
Haemoglobinopathies
16
26
39
64
6
10
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Anna Kuzio
12
Ophthalmologist
38
62
13
21
10
17
13
Fundoplication
13
21
43
71
5
8
14
Immunology assessment
52
85
6
10
3
5
15
Flu jab
11
18
42
69
8
13
Total
23
776
655
132
%
19,4
51.7
43.7
8.8
The first term is made up of two elements, the second one is appointment, which is a
common word and for most of the participants it was very simple to grasp the correct
meaning of the term. The term outpatient was sometimes translated literally. The
respondents recognized that an outpatient clinic is something located outside the
hospital, but were not able to state the correct equivalent in Polish. Element no.2
(orthotic appointment) is similar to example no. 1 (outpatient appointment) as this term
is a compound involving more than one element, orthotic and appointment. Most of the
subjects failed to get the right meaning of the term in Polish. It seems that the first
element of the orthotic term is responsible for the error as it was associated with the
term orthodontist and related to teeth. As a result, it was rendered as an activity dealing
in the dentistry field. The subjects failed to observe that orthotic is a synonym for bone.
It indicates that students faced some difficulties deriving the meaning of the expression.
On the other hand, term no.14 (immunology assessment) was one of the easiest elements
to translate in the group, only three people offered the wrong translation. It showed that
students did not have a problem deriving the meaning of the expression from the
context offered.
Terms like thalassemia, SARS, paediatrician and haemophilia were rendered correctly.
These terms can be translated using direct translation in Polish. Most participants
decided to rely on offering the closest and safest equivalent for these terms. In the case
of the abbreviation SARS, the transliteration of this abbreviation is commonly used in
Polish. Paediatrician was one of the least difficult terms. It accounted for one of the
highest percentages of adequate translations. Similarly, the term haemophilia did not
pose many translation problems. More problematic was the term thalassemia, but most
of the participants succeeded in giving acceptable translations which are often calques
of the terms and are commonly used in Polish.
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Meningococcal diseases appeared to be a difficult term to translate as the participants
delivered unacceptable translations. Meningococcal is an adjective that is used to
describe the diseases. Students experienced difficulties in comprehending the exact
meaning of the concept. They typically offered an unacceptable translation of the term
that could be back-translated as meningitis. Even though the participants who gave the
unacceptable translations grasped the meaning of the prefix, they failed to observe the
right semantic relationship linking the two elements of the term. The term aspiration
also caused translation problems. The cause for this could be that the term can be
translated into Polish using the direct translation method but the result does not reflect
the medical term. Some of the translations provided were recognized as unacceptable
because, from the sequence of the text, it was clear that aspiration is the concern and not
the treatment. Yet while providing the equivalent in Polish, students offered translations
that indicated the treatment and not the concern.
Demyelinating neuropathy is one of the conditions with a small number of accurate
renderings. The explanation for this small number may be because in medical
dictionaries the compound could not be found. Most of the students offered a back-
translation of the term neuropathy. This could have been due to their failure to find a
Polish counterpart for the first element, demyelinating, so they tried to resolve the
problem using the omission strategy. This led to a loss of meaning of the one part of the
concept. Term no. 10 (African trypanosomiasis) also caused some problems for the
future translators. The students had difficulties with the second part of the concept as it
is related to the Latin word denoting sleeping sickness. Lack of knowledge concerning
the Latin stock of vocabulary in medical translation can result in more problems like
this. Term no.11 (haemoglobinopathies) appeared to be too complex to students to
grasp the meaning of the term. Students probably had problems with identifying the
semantic components that were embedded in the term. This could be ascribed to the fact
that the participants did not know the meaning of the condition in English and had
problems with understanding what the components meant in English. ‘Fundoplication’
has shown a low rate of appropriate translation. The answers offered by the participants
indicated that the respondents were unable to comprehend the meaning of the word in
English (SL) and were not able to find any easily available counterpart in their mother
tongue that resulted in offering a direct calque into Polish. The term flu jab was not easy
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Anna Kuzio
to translate. Moreover, this is an example of medical jargon. There may be may variants
(e.g. injection, shot) of each word that can also cause some difficulties. The group of
students had some difficulties in comprehending the accurate meaning of this concept. It
appeared that the polysemous element jab was the problematic part of the compound.
This caused the participants confused as to what to select as the suitable equivalent for
jab, which goes with the element flu. Besides this was a problematic word, the
compound itself is not present in medical dictionaries, so the participants may resort to
employing literal translation.
One can notice that some technical terms pose a lot of problems for the participants.
Moreover, some of the participants find it more difficult to render the proper meaning
while some of these terms are embedded in the context, as the context frequently creates
another challenge. Therefore, So, it is vital to examine how the same subjects decode
the meaning of some technical terms. In my opinion, it is not possible to measure how
many ideas and how much information a medical translator must try to understand in
practice in order to translate efficiently. Alternatively, I will offer some qualitative
recommendations based on the medical translation course I had a chance to create.
I consider that students who are involved in translating must be exposed, either by
taking part in a special courses or self-paced learning, to the entire subsystem of
medical concepts. This will allow them to have a holistic view of the area of concepts.
In clinical medicine, the conceptual fields are clearly represented by organ systems. A
systematic presentation of the basis of medical knowledge about a particular organ
system may encompass the following aspects: anatomy and physiology, disease
symptoms, diagnostic work, and treatment. The medical translation course therefore
should comprise quite extensive English texts on various organ systems. Some terms
should be emphasized during class discussion, e.g. due to the specific nature of their
Polish equivalents or in order to establish a link between the concept and other concepts
from the text. There is sometimes additional terminology presented which is not linked
to a specific organ system. For example, the difference between hypertrophy and
hyperplasia in the context of mild prostate hypertrophy / prostate hyperplasia in the
presentation of the urinary system has been a point of reference for the implementation
of related terms such as dysplasia, cancer or anaplasia and proliferation.
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The translation course would therefore have to contain solutions to enhance the
maintenance of thematic knowledge. This is best achieved, in my opinion, by enabling
students to understand the links between concepts. Learning associative relations is
quite obviously the simplest way to gain a broader comprehension of the conceptual
system of a field.
Moreover, a course in terminology and phraseology must apply to both English and the
students' own mother tongue. Since medicine is a domain of life to which virtually all of
us have been exposed and medical issues are passed on in everyday situations by means
of words, which may vary from official terminology, it is vital that students should
study those texts for patients that may not include adequate terminology in Polish. This
concerns mainly - and paradoxically - words of Latin and Greek origin, which seem
very medical, but in reality are not used by physicians e.g. chronic or epilepsy.
Cases of terminological distortions can also create some problems in translation from a
foreign language to one’s mother tongue. For example, the gallbladder (Polish literal
translation
‘gall sac’), may have its unprofessional sound of gallbladder when the
translator decides to use the common term instead of sticking to the literal translation
(gall sac), resulting in an error.
The terminology should also be taught with an example-based linguistic approach and
not with the purpose of giving students the knowledge that is specific to a particular
concept. Students may be concerned with understanding the causes of hypocalcemia,
but their translation skills will be better understood if they know that the name of such
laboratory abnormalities is developed in accordance with the pattern hypo/hyper +
name of substance, as it will allow them to use similar patterns to understand more
terms that cause potential translation challenges.
Obviously not all information concerning medical terminology can be modelled,
particularly since the terminology is to be provided in two languages. As mentioned
earlier, English Latinate terms have Polish equivalents that represent native Slavic
words. Some of them are structurally identical to the English terms while some are not.
Multi-word terms may likewise be classified in one of three categories: similar in form
(e.g. invasive cardiology), similar in structure (e.g. malignant anaemia) or differently
structured (e.g. cerebral hematoma).
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Anna Kuzio
Self-study skills should not be overlooked because most translation assignments require
students to understand unfamiliar concepts, but this is no different from what can
happen with other translation courses with specific orientation. Students should also
receive a list of general medical reference works and should be encouraged to read
professional medical texts regularly.
IV. IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
Medical translators should have a good knowledge of both SL and TL, a good
knowledge of the subject, an up-to-date knowledge of their field of specialization and a
broad comprehension of medical terms and abbreviations.
After the analysis of the errors, it can be stated that the students do not have adequate
knowledge of medicine, which results in incorrect translations. It is evident that there is
a problem regarding imbalances, relationships, abbreviations and new terms, as
translators appear to be trying to find them in English-Polish medical dictionaries that
they believed to be the only source of information that could be seen as a reliable source
of information. At the same time, they disregarded various databases, multilingual
corpora and other resources that could offer them more reliable information. This would
indicate that regularly updated English-Polish medical dictionaries would be very useful
and the quality of translation would be much better. It would be advisable to suggest
that the Polish academics should undertake some efforts to create a dictionary that
would be very helpful and of better quality for translation. It is important to point out
that specialized medical dictionaries on the Polish market are becoming more and more
popular, but there are still only a few of them, which does not provide full access to
medical knowledge.
Furthermore, teaching medical translation with respect to linguistic diversity should be
compulsory for translation majors as students do not always are aware that linguistic
diversity is a key element. It would be worth engaging translators who are interested in
working in the field of medicine, in order to be able to participate in the training of
students to work in the field of medical translation. It is also advisable to involve
medical students in the translation process in order to show students that the aspect of
collaboration with a professional is essential at a certain stage. This training would
Language Value 11 (1), 23-44
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Difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical translation and methods to overcome
them when teaching medical English to future translators
enable students to become well acquainted with medical terminology and the manner in
which they work. From an academic point of view, deeper research on terminological
inconsistency and standardization would be useful.
This study was only aimed at addressing the problems that students and subsequently
future translators may encounter, it should be noticed that the greatest problem arose in
the use of medical terms in English and Polish. In general, further in-depth research is
required to address the problem of medical translation, and in particular the problems of
semantic and associative relationships and abbreviations.
V. CONCLUSIONS
The results of this research reveal that the translation of medical terms is a matter of
concern for unprofessional translators and university students. Moreover, the research
results reveal that inexperienced students have a clear weakness in identifying precise
translations and appropriate explanations of terms which are not found in English-Polish
medical dictionaries and CAT tools or have no counterparts in Polish. The study also
found that most of the unacceptable translations come from students who have less than
five years of medical experience. This could be negatively reflected in their work as
translators in a field such as medicine. Furthermore, the results of the study highlight
the fact that hiring inexperienced translators and interpreters in bilingual settings
(English and other languages) without offering them training may create risks for
communication between patients and healthcare professionals. That is, interpreters
interested in working in the medical field must be better trained before they start their
careers.
The findings of this research confirm previous hypotheses that translators would
encounter some obstacles in translating some medical terms. As mentioned above, the
findings demonstrate that certain difficulties were triggered by certain medical terms,
that usually that terms which were represented by compounds, collocations and
abbreviations, which cannot be found either in English-Polish dictionaries or in
monolingual dictionaries. They also indicate that the students use different approaches
to translating medical terms with varying degrees of success.
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Anna Kuzio
For this reason, hopefully the results of this study will be considered as a way of
enhancing the level and competence of translators by offering them special training in
medical translation and expanding the translation programme for translators in Poland
to include some medical translation courses.
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Received: 17 July 2019
Accepted: 13 December 2019
Cite this article as:
Kuzio, Anna.
2019.
“Difficulties resulting from language diversity in teaching medical
translation and methods to overcome them when teaching medical English to future translators”.
Language Value
11
(1),
23-44. Jaume I University ePress: Castelló, Spain.
ISSN 1989-7103
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