Международная научно
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практическая конференция
«Современные тенденции при обучении
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AN UNIQUE BLEND OF MEDICAL TRANSLATION
Sharipova Feruza Ibragimovna
PhD, associate professor Tashkent pediatric medical institute. Tashkent, Uzbekistan
Annotation.
Although many studies have conducted a move analysis of
medical translation service genres (e.g., responses to online negative reviews), no
previous study has investigated the discourse structure of organizational medical
translation to customer services in a doctor-to-patient context. This is surprising
because medical translation is one of the preferred genresfor effective handling by
companies and patients. We address this gap by performing a move analysis to look
into rhetorical and linguistic patterns of this genre and by comparing it to related
customer service genres.
Key words:
medical translation, English language, master degree, teaching.
RELEVANCE
The very label translation is often avoided in favour of alternative terms,
such as localisation (Human Anatomy), transcreation (pharmaceutics),
transediting (physiology and pathology of diseases). The competences
framework developed for the European Master
’
s in Translation network speaks
of experts in multilingual and multimedia communication to account for the
complexity of translation competence. This paper addresses the following related
questions: How can translation competence in such a wide sense be developed in
training programmes? Do some competences required in the medicine sphere go
beyond translation competence?
The researcher
in the aim makes a contrastive view
of the possibly
existing problems of teaching English medical translation for Master degree
students to elicit possible factors and to suggests that competencies can be
provided to students are influenced by a teacher
’
s short-term translator
experience, his or her evolving more theoretical than practical approach.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
It is often argued that translation is invisible when done well-the so-called
pane of glass analogy, with a “good” translation b
eing represented by a clear,
smooth sheet of glass, while cracks and scratches represent flaws, which draw
attention to the enterprise (cf. Chesterman and Wagner 2002). The same
metaphor might be applied to medical translation quality. Working with medical
texts will always be easier for translators to deal with, in contrast to defective and
poor originals. In order to gain more insight into the actual experience of
translators and to offer some quantitative data, a questionnaire survey was
carried out among Master degree students in Tashkent Pediatric Medical
Institute. This section will present the results. The survey was performed in the
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иностранному языку в XXI веке»
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second half of 2021. The questionnaire was compiled using Google Forms and
sent via email to slightly more than 50 Master degree students, out of which 28
responded. The questionnaire contained contingency questions, multiple choice
as well as checkbox questions, and open ended questions. The complete
questionnaire is included in the appendix. The prime focus of the questionnaire
was on the medical translation quality and defects. Some questions were related
to the strategies employed by students facing problematic academic issues, while
other, more tangential questions were also presented to the survey participants.
In the following paragraphs we decided to offer and comment on only the most
relevant and interesting data. To close the section about the profiles of translators
participating in the survey, figure1 offers the most frequently translated text
typesor genres participants work with. As expected, fiction comprises only a small
pro-portion of translated texts, while technical, scientific and academic texts
constitute the bulk of the translation input on the translation market.
THE RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The majority of students of Master degree concurred with each other in that
they correct typos and obvious grammatical mistakes with contacting the teacher.
Several respondents stated they always add commentary to explain their
corrections so that the defective parts of the medical translation can be amended.
The situation nevertheless gets more complicated when it comes to problems
with terminology or incomprehensibility. In these cases, medical students usually
contact the teacher straight away, asking for clarification. Some of the
respondents stated that they use various search engines, terminology databases
or parallel corpora in order to find the best equivalent that would suit the co-text.
About three translators declared they never ameliorate medical texts, but rather
append commentary, offering possible solutions. In other words, they assign
responsibility for the final decision to someone else.
The present survey demonstrated the relevance of the topic, that is, medical
texts translation quality and deficiencies, since quality cannot be taken for
granted. The following section will offer several tentative strategies on how to
deal with defects when translating medical texts.
Since medical texts translation defects impede the translation process, it is
worth paying particular attention to the analysis and pre-translation phase, which
makes the sourcematerial ready for translation. However, as Drugan (2013)
points out, while pre-translation testing is common in software localization, it is
relatively rare in other domains. Furthermore, the opportunity to improve
medical texts translation quality can prevent errors before they arise (cf. Drugan
2013; Kubánek),
Gouadec (2007, 71) speaks about translatability assessment,
that is, a quality control which should guarantee that the medical texts translation
is up to standard and does not contain any language-related or fact-related errors,
and that the material is in fact translatable. The translatability assessment, based
on and adapted from Gouadec (2007, 70
–
72) and Nord (2005), should include:
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практическая конференция
«Современные тенденции при обучении
иностранному языку в XXI веке»
268
−
identifying any errors, obscurities, interference or real possible errors;
−
making a note of any questions that circumstances permitting will be
forwarded to the author or translation initiator;
−
identifying any item which is not fully understood or which requires
further documentation;
−
identifying any items requiring special attention, in particular those
ambiguities where several options may be open to the translator (e.g. should
measurement units be converted?);
−
listing all the terminology and phraseology requiring specific treatment
(e.g. equivalents will have to be researched; specific terminology will need to be
provided or validated; terminological consistency may be at risk, etc.).
CONCLUSION
The the paper presented the results of a questionnaire survey among
50 Master degree students in the Tash PMI as well as freelance translators, with
a primary focus on quality and defects of medical texts translation. The survey
demonstrated the relevance of the topic as 78% translators stated that they
encounter medical texts translation defects. Apart from spelling and punctuation
issues, defects regarding stylistics and incomprehensibility were selected as the
most frequent problems. In all, 88% of translators indicated incomprehensibility
as a valid reason for rejecting a translation, 30% file type or text extraction and
26% terminology. Almost 60% of the respondents had been asked to ameliorate
poor medical texts by correcting the defects and 72% of the translators prefer to
consult the teacher before correcting any defect. In the final part of the paperwe
offered several tentative strategies for dealing with medical texts translation
defects, seeking inspiration amongst other things in medical texts translation
analysis or translatability assessment, Gouadec and Nord
’
s principles.
Considering the decreasing quality of medical texts translation, we came to
conclusion that medical texts translation cannot be regarded as inviolable or
sacrosanct entities and it is the translators
’
duty to deal with all defects that affect
it. In order words, medical workers, writing academic texts and translating
medical texts should become communication experts with a broader variety of
available services, which would not only include risk management strategy (when
facing a defective text) but also educating the auditorium about the importance of
text and documentation quality.
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извлечено от
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