The translation of English medical terms into Persian

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Date
2009
Authors
Zeinali, Ali Akbar
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Abstract
This study analyses and compares the medical terms in English (SL) and Persian (TL) from the word formation processes (WFPs) and the translation procedures (TPs) perspectives. The sample of the study involved a selection of medical terms (diseases and procedures) from ICD-9-CM and the equivalents provided in “Guide to ICD-9-CM in Persian”. The SL and the TL terms were subjected to evaluation, followed by a comparative analysis. These pairs provided the data which enabled the researcher to perform the statistical descriptive and qualitative analysis. The collected data included a population of 408 English medical terms from the source text and their pairs from the target text. The analysis indicated that Persian applies a variety of TPs in accordance with the available WFPs. The most frequently applied TP is substitution. It constitutes of about 62% of the terms, regardless of any other probable simultaneous procedure. Moreover, with respect to WFPs, the most observable process in this study is borrowing (60%), in which process—borrowing—the most applied language is Arabic (40%). On the other hand, the findings of this study indicated that there is a problem with combinational potentiality of Persian. The TL equivalents in this study usually appeared as phrase syntax, while their SL pairs have single words. In conclusion, for the medical terms chosen in this study, this research can be highlighted by some differences and similarities found between the SL and the TL with respect to WFP, like “borrowing, compounding, derivation and eponym”. Furthermore, the most frequently applied TPs for rendering the same terms are “through translation, shift and substitution”. It indicates that there is no appropriate Persian equivalent for medical terms in some cases.
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Master
Keywords
Humanities , Translation , Medical terms
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