Investigating the Linguistic Problems Encountered by Sudanese MA Students of Translation in Rendering Medical Discourse into Arabic

Abstract

Medical translation refers to the translation of documentation related to pharmaceuticals and all the elements that make up the healthcare industry. The translation of medical text is very important for clinical trials in order for patients, local clinicians and representatives of regulatory organizations to understand them. Likewise it is usual for regulatory approval submissions to be translated. This study sheds light on some linguistic problem encountered by MA students of translation in rendering medical discourse into Arabic. The different realizations of the problem are apparent in the translation of medical jargon, medical equivalent, unavailability of medical course in MA program, and unavailability of medial material or resources for MA students of translation. The purpose of the present study is to display the factors of terms usability and circulations, the type of the target audience and the context of translation have an important role in lessening terminology challenge to a large extent, and, hence, they should be taken into account when determining which type of equivalence should be used to serve as a translation for a single English medical term. The representative data for this study is collected through two tools. Questionnaire, targeting a sample of translation teachers to review the performance of MA students of translation and the materials used. Data collection also involved a translation text for MA students of translation and they were requested to translate it from English into Arabic in order to test the assumed hypotheses. The study shown that MA students of translation are familiar with medical terminologies. Thus, it has been found that the most medical terminologies are borrowed from Latin and old Greek. However, translator should possibly be aware of this issue. As long as the non-specialized audience is not interested in the exact rendering of the sophisticated terms, strategies such as: amplification, diffusion, explication, divergence, substitution, reduction provide a chance for the translator to provide the audience with simplified hints for understanding. The study has also concluded that approaches of medical translation into Arabic should not be prescriptive but rather descriptive and complying with the Arabic language structure if English terminology in medical Arabic is to be overcome.