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Article published In: Translation and Interpreting Studies
Vol. 12:3 (2017) ► pp.405–426

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Lexical variation, register and explicitation in medical translation

A comparable corpus study of medical terminology in US websites translated into Spanish

 | Rutgers University
 | Universidad de Granada
Published online: 23 November 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/tis.12.3.03jim
Abstract
Differences in register, lexical use, syntactic shifts or determinologization strategies between source and target medical texts can produce usability or comprehensibility issues (Askehave, Inger and Karen K. Zethsen. 2000a. “Medical texts made simple – Dream or reality?” Hermes: Journal of Linguistics 231: 63–74.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Tercedor Sánchez, Maribel, and Clara Inés López-Rodríguez. 2012. “Access to health in an intercultural setting: the role of corpora and images in grasping term variation.” Linguistica Antverpiensia 111: 247–268.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Nisbeth Jensen, Matilde and Karen K. Zethsen. 2012. “Patient information leaflets: Trained translators and pharmacists-cum-translators – a comparison.” Linguistica Antverpiensia New Series. Themes in Translation Studies 111: 31–49.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Alarcón Navío, Esperanza, Clara Inés López-Rodríguez, and Maribel Tercedor. 2016. “Variation dénominative et familiarité en tant que source d’incertitude en traduction médicale.” Meta 61 (1): 117–144. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). This study analyzes differences in lexical variation between translated and non-translated online medical texts resulting in potential register shifts, also known as “register mismatches” (Pilegaard, Morten. 1997. “Translation of medical research articles.” In Text Typology and Translation, ed. by Anna Trosborg, 159–184. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). The study uses a corpus methodology to compare (1) the frequency of Latin-Greek (LG) terms in translated medical websites in the USA and in similar non-translated texts in Spain and Latin America, and (2) the frequency of determinologization and explicitation of LG terms in both textual populations. The results show that US medical websites translated into Spanish show lower frequencies of LG terms and higher frequencies of reformulation strategies than similar non-translated ones; they are partly explained through the process of interference from source texts.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Register, lay-friendliness, and determinologization in medical translation
    • 2.1Determinologization in medical texts
    • 2.2Corpus-based studies and general tendencies of translation: Explicitation and interference
  • 3.Empirical study
    • 3.1Methodology
    • 3.2The TWCoMS corpus
    • 3.3Materials
    • 3.4Lexical analyses
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Contrastive analysis of frequency of use of Latin-Greek terms
    • 4.2Reformulation and explicitation in translated medical texts
    • 4.3Analysis of lexical variation related to reformulations
  • 5.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
References (44)
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