The role of registerial expertise in texture re-creation in medical translation
Cohesion and coherence in the case of translating Huang Di Nei Jing
This article investigates how an important aspect of translators’ registerial expertise — domain-specific
(medical) training and experience — may have consequences for the texture of a specialised translation, i.e. the translations of
the Chinese medicine classic Huang Di Nei Jing. Through a fine-grained analysis of cohesion and coherence, this
study demonstrates that a translator with a higher level of domain-specific expertise tends to produce a translation (i) that is
more lexically explicit and cohesively harmonious, (ii) with a richer semantic variety, more extended cohesive chains and
cross-chain interactions and (iii) having a higher degree of definitiveness. The findings suggest that a translator’s
domain-specific expertise could have measurable consequences for the texture of the target text.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Translation expertise and registerial expertise
- 3.Methodology
- 3.1Data
- 3.2Analytical framework
- 4.Findings and discussion
- 4.1Registerial expertise and cohesive harmony in translation
- 4.2Registerial expertise assumes a higher degree of explicitness
- 4.3Higher level of registerial expertise, a higher degree of definitiveness?
- 4.4Registerial expertise and the construal of semantic variety
- 5.Conclusion
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Author queries
-
References
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