Cover not available
Article published In:
Target
Vol. 16:1 (2004) ► pp.69–103

How to manage patients in English–Spanish translation

A target-oriented contrastive approach to Methods [1] 1

| Universidad de Cantabria, Spain

This paper describes the application of a target-oriented contrastive analysis model to an extensive corpus of medical research articles. The analysis focuses on the Methods section and a subset of lexical items representing persons viewed as the object of clinical study. Quantitative contrastive analysis revealed statistically significant differences between the translations from English and the independently created Spanish texts in all the thematic, syntactic and lexical variables analysed. Qualitative contextual analysis showed that four basic criteria for thematic position and a series of associated translation strategies are capable of correcting the excesses and deficits observed, thus producing a more natural and acceptable target language text.

Keywords: Contrastive analysis, corpus-based studies, English–Spanish, medical translation, quantitative analysis, target-oriented translation, theme–rheme structure
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Study design
  • 3.Material and methods
    • 3.1The corpus
    • 3.2Definition of variables
    • 3.3Statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Criteria
    • 5.2Strategies
    • 5.3Application of the criteria and strategies to the translations
      • 5.3.1Postposition of subject
      • 5.3.2Redundancy
      • 5.3.3Reduction
      • 5.3.4Syntactic changes
      • 5.3.5Analysis of a sample text
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 21 February 2005
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/target.16.1.05wil
References

References

Chesterman, Andrew
1998 Contrastive functional analysis. Amsterdam–Philadelphia: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Congost Maestre, Nereida
1994 Problemas de la traducción técnica: Los textos médicos en inglés. Alicante: Universidad de Alicante.Google Scholar
Daneš, František
1974 “Functional sentence perspective and the organization of the text”. František Daneš, ed. Papers on functional sentence perspective. Prague: Academia 1974 106–128.Google Scholar
Firbas, Jan
1992 Functional sentence perspective in written and spoken communication. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Fries, Peter H.
1995 “Themes, methods of development, and texts”. Ruqaiya Hasan and Peter H. Fries, eds. On subject and theme. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins 1995 317–359.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
García, E.
1975 The role of theory in linguistic analysis: The Spanish pronoun system. Amsterdam: North Holland.Google Scholar
Halliday, M. A. K.
1970 “Language structure and language function”. John Lyons, ed. New horizons in linguistics. Harmondsworth: Penguin 1970 140–164.Google Scholar
1985 An introduction to functional grammar. London: Edward Arnold.Google Scholar
Jiménez Juliá, Tomás
1996 “Eje temático y tema en español”. M. Casado, A. Freire, J. E. López Pereira and J. I. Pérez Pascual, eds. Scripta Philologica in memoriam Manuel Taboada Cid. Coruña: Universidade da Coruña 1996 453–492.Google Scholar
Krzeszowski, Tomasz P.
1981 “Quantitative contrastive analysis”. Studia linguistica 351. 102–113.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1984 “Tertium comparationis”. Jacek Fisiak, ed. Contrastive linguistics: Prospects and problems. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter 1984 301–312.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Navarro, Fernando A.
1997 Traducción y lenguaje en medicina. Barcelona: Fundación Dr. Antonio Esteve.Google Scholar
Navarro, Fernando A., Francisco Hernández and Lydia Rodríguez-Villanueva
1994 “Uso y abuso de la voz pasiva en el lenguaje médico escrito”. Medicina clínica 1031. 461–464.Google Scholar
Rabadán, Rosa
1991 Equivalencia y traducción. León: Universidad de León.Google Scholar
Skelton, John
1994 “Analysis of the structure of original research papers: An aid to writing original papers for publication”. British journal of general practice 441. 455–459.Google Scholar
Swales, John
1990 Genre analysis: English in academic and research settings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Toury, Gideon
1995 Descriptive Translation Studies and beyond. Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1996 “A contextual study of lexical verbs in two types of medical research reports: Clinical and experimental”. English for specific purposes 151. 175–197.   DOI logoGoogle Scholar
1997 “Presentation-type structures in medical reports”. Miguel Ángel Vega and Rafael Martín-Gaitero, eds. La palabra vertida: Estudios en torno a la traducción. Madrid: Universidad Complutense 1997 491–500.Google Scholar
1999 “Corpus-based contrastive analysis and the translation of specialized texts”. Miguel Ángel Vega and Rafael Martín-Gaitero, eds. Lengua y cultura: Estudios en torno a la traducción. Madrid: Universidad Complutense 1999 515–522.Google Scholar
2002 “Aspectos de la estructura de tema y rema en la traducción de los artículos biomédicos del inglés al español: Estudio contrastivo basado en la lingüística de corpus”. Universidad de León (Spain). [Unpublished Ph.D. Thesis.]Google Scholar
Cited by

Cited by 5 other publications

Károly, Krisztina
2022. Translating Academic Texts. In The Cambridge Handbook of Translation, ► pp. 340 ff. DOI logo
Li, Xiangdong
2020. Mediating cross-cultural differences in research article rhetorical moves in academic translation: A pilot corpus-based study of abstracts. Lingua 238 ► pp. 102795 ff. DOI logo
Peterlin, Agnes
2008. Translating metadiscourse in research articles. Across Languages and Cultures 9:2 ► pp. 205 ff. DOI logo
Williams, Ian A.
2007. A corpus-based study of the verbobservarin English-Spanish translations of biomedical research articles. Target. International Journal of Translation Studies 19:1 ► pp. 85 ff. DOI logo
Williams, Ian A.
2009. A Corpus-based Study of Spanish Translations of the Verb ‘report’ in Biomedical Research Articles. Meta 54:1 ► pp. 146 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 14 april 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.