Medical text translation problems

Abstract

The article focuses on semantic aspects of a medical text in view of English-Russian and Russian-English translation. The authors review the major groups of vocabulary that are to be counted as translation domains in a medical text and consider the translation solutions. The lexical units were selected by continuous sampling method from English medical texts of various functional types. As a result, the following groups of lexical units were determined, which could be accounted as translation domains: special medical terms, contractions and abbreviations, data display format and stereotyped expressions. Each group is characterized by certain features that have to be considered while performing the translation of a medical text, such as cross-field terminology, semantic inconsistency in a number of English and Russian medical terms, certain differences in the usage of eponyms, and different share of abbreviations and contractions in the two languages. There are also cases when abbreviations are multiple-valued, which hinders selecting the right translation. Another feature to be considered by a medical translator is inconsistency in data formats and the use of specific stereotyped expressions, as well as a substantial number of neologisms. The most common translation strategies are the following: the use of context equivalents, more frequent use of full translation of English abbreviations, the use of transcription, transliteration loan or descriptive translations for neologisms, and the use of functional equivalents to translate stereotyped expressions.