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Rendering Etymological Variation Of Medical Terminology



Author(s)

Roksolana Povoroznyuk

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DOI:10.17265/1548-6648/2015.01.006

This article explores the problem of rendering etymological variation of medical terminology. Its findings are based on the comparative analysis of the original and translated versions of “The Physician” by N. Gordon (translated into Russian by Vladimir Polyakov). The aim of the present study is to corroborate the hypothesis that the etymology of medical terms’ translation correspondences is a prerequisite defining the adequacy of the target text. Resorting to the etymological variation, by contrast, denotes the SL (source language) or TL (target language) bias of the translation strategy. To achieve this aim, we used the following methods: descriptive statistical analysis of terminological units in order to assess their etymological correspondence to the original units, distributional analysis of the translation techniques and procedures with a statistical analysis of their frequency. Results of the study suggest that the medical terminology is rendered by borrowings (34.65%) more often than by terminological variants signaling communicative translation procedure (28.71%). The footnotes, manifestations of the amplification strategy (22.78%), and calques (13.86%) are used to ensure understanding of the target audience. This distribution of techniques and procedures reveals a predominant SL bias of the translation.

etymological variation, medical terminology, translation strategies, translation procedures, SL bias, TL bias.