Technical University of Civil Engineering Bucharest

Faculty of Engineering in Foreign Languages

Department of Foreign Languages and Communication
Specialization of Translation and Interpretation

DIFFICULTIES AND SOLUTIONS IN TRANSLATION

MEDICAL PSYCHOLOGY

Raluca Ghenulescu Ph.D

Students:
Brenda-Maria Grecu
Alina-Florina Glc
Diana-Roxana Olteanu
 ABSTRACT
The present article deals with the field of medical psychology and the issues that we
encountered in the process of translation. Our paper is divided in five parts: in the
introduction we will describe the field of medical psychology and then the importance of
translation in this area; moreover, we will present the features of a scientific text. Also, we
will present the difficulties we had during the translation of the texts and the proposed
solutions and, in the end, we have a presentation of some specialized terms and a glossary.

Key words: disorder, diagnosis, specialized terminology, scientific language

1. Introduction

Medical psychology is a social science which deals with the humans behaviour, their
physical and mental health. Also, psychology has a strong connection with the medical field.
It is a powerful bond between a persons mental state and her physical condition. This branch
uses techniques that helps patients in their fight with chronic illnesses , stress, harmful
emotions and mental health issues.

It is important to make the difference between psychology and psychiatry: the first one
focuses on helping emotional and mental suffering people, without any prescription of drugs,
but using specific exercises in order to help the patient in the healing process, while the
second one implies another approach based on medication prescription.

2. The importance of translation in this field

Did you know that translation can save lives? Everyday we face with news from around the
world and it is important to always have someone that can make the information accessible to
everyone, everywhere. Translators are those who can update us in a short period of time when
it comes to medical news.

We should take into consideration that psychology is an academic subject and it could help
anyone at a certain point in their lives to find out why they feel the way they do. It represents
a specialized field of medicine and has a lot of specialized terms and phrases.

Steven Breckler, Ph.D. in Social Psychology from Ohio State University said: Psychology is
a translational science. Due to the continous research made worldwide, psychology
translation has an essential role in spreading the information about the diagnosis, treatment
and prevention of disease. Also, some factors are involved in the process of translating. They are
called psycholinguistic factors, which is why translation and psychology depend on each other. Over
the years, this connection became more notable.

3. The features of a scientific text

In the last few years it was proved that psychology is a science. Medicine/Psychology
presents articles with a formal register and the level of difficulty D. It is dedicated to all kind
of people, specialized and also general public. The purpose is to inform the public about this
field without using figurative speech and emotional comments. The author (or the translator)
should not express his opinions and thoughts and should avoid the using of metaphors and
connotative meanings. Thus, we will present you some of the features of scientific texts.

To begin with, the field of psychology has a myriad of specialized terms and phrases and we
can give exemples from our translated texts: endorphins, point of collapse, anxiety,
tulburare de spectru autist, epilepsie etc.

Second of all, another characteristic of specialized texts is the use of abbreviations, our texts
contain abbreviations such as: TSA, EEG, CT, RMN or aka.

Also, it has numerals and symbols: 34,000 Norwegian adults between January 1984 and June
1997; had a 44% increased risk; have prevented 12% of depression diagnoses; 1 to 2
hours a week.

Thirdly, the language is conventional , objective, clear and it uses formal language. The
scientific writing has some rules to follow regarding the structure; the number of words in a
phrase, which should be as short as possible; the expression of one idea per sentence and one
theme per paragraph. Also, in this type of texts it is recommended to avoid the repetition
because it reduces the clarity of the text and the readers could be confused. Regarding the
used language, we should not have contractions, rhetorical questions and colocvial language,
it is recommended to use child instead of kid.
Moreover, scientific texts use different types of tenses like:

Present tense simple for general truth A new study from Australia finds that...can
elevate ones mood or these results are particularly pertinent;
Past tense for showing the results of an action: Anyone who has experienced or
Weve known for some time.

Another grammatical features that we have are:

Infinitive of purpose: appear to act as a buffer, the great potential to integrate

exercise into, then this is likely to bring;
Noun phrases: euphoric runners high, physical activity, mental health, health
campaigns;
 Modal verbs: -can (ability) can elevate ones mood;

-could (possibility) - 1 hour of physical activity each week could

have prevented;

Phrasal verbs: sweat it out, look at

Numerals and symbols: 34,000 Norwegian adults between January 1984 and June
1997; had a 44% increased risk; have prevented 12% of depression diagnoses; 1
to 2 hours a week.

4. Translation issues and solutions

The main priority of this text is to keep the vocabulary as simple as possible in order to be
understood by the general public, not only by specialized people. At the first sight, this field
does not involve difficulties of understanding, but if we look into in greater deepth, we will
realize that we need a good translation. And here intervenes the translator who has to translate
the text to make it logical and precise. The person who reads it has to be able to diagnose the
disorders specific to this field. J.P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet give us a whole range of translation
techniques based on aspects of stylistics, perceived in both languages. Loan,calque, literal
translation, transposition, modulation, equivalence and adaptation are the methods proposed
by the two authors. Peter Newmark also talks about translation methods and translation
procedures and he compares them saying that the former refers to whole text while the latter
focuses on sentences and the smaller units of language. There are a lot of translation
methods and procedures that we have used in our translation such as: literal translation and
adaptation as methods; modulation, explicitation, transpositions.
In our texts, we used literal translation for terms such as: endorphins, chemicals

We also met a false friend, the term conducted which has a different meaning in target
language, namely efectuat.

Another problem that deceived us was the translation of the structure euphoric runners
high. According to Merriam Webster Dictionary this means a feeling of euphoria that is
experienced by some individuals engaged in strenuous running and that is held to be
associated with a release of endorphins by the brain, so we translated as senzaia euforic
rezultat dintr-un antrenament de alergare and we used explicitation in order to introduce
precise details for clarification.
By using transposition (which implies a change in the grammatical class) we translated the
adjective sustained with the prepositional noun de durat in order to make the text sound
natural in the target language, without changing the meaning of the structure. Also, we
translated the infinitive verb to play as predicate verb joac.

Using modulation which reproduces the message of the original text in the target language
we have translated the complex sentence A new study from Australia finds that the even
small doses of exercise as little as 1 hour per week can elevate ones mood, regardless of
age or gender. as Indiferent de vrst sau sex, exerciiile fizice n doze mici - chiar i de o
or pe sptmn, pot mbunti starea de spirit, fapt demonstrat de un nou studiu din
Australia because we wanted to avoid the ambiguity.

We translated the verb sweated out as a exersa intens by using paraphrase to render a
logical sense to the sentence. This procedure is used for explaining the terms without losing
their original meaning.

We also had difficulties with the structure extensive population-based health survey
because we did not find a direct equivalent in target language, so we chose to translate it as
cele mai vaste studii de sntate pe baza populaiei efectuate vreodat with the aim of doing
it to sound natural. Moreover, the structure follow-up session was difficult to translate
because in the target language does not exist a direct equivalent, so we translated it as
urmatoarea edin.

Screening is a specialized English term which came into Romanian through borrowing, we
searched it and we found out that it is an international term.
We used dictionaries, glossaries of specialized terms and databases for the translations. For
the acronymes such as: aka, TSA, EEG, CT, RMN, ASD we had to search on the internet and
we discovered that are acronymes related to the field of medicine.

5. Specialized terminology
Terminology can be seen in three ways:

1. As a science which is independent from linguistics, with helpful lexical information;

2. As a vast method to systemathize the precise data in a certain domain;
3. As a group of terms suitable for a precise field of interest, known as jargon or
specialized vocabulary (for example the nomenclature of Medicine, Arts, IT)

First of all, the term opiate has its origin in Medieval Latin and it was used from about
1535. It is a specialized term and it has the plural form opiates. It is a term used in the field
of Pharmacology.

Secondly, the term data is used in the field of Communication & Information and Computer
Science. It is a specialized term and comes from Latin (it has a Latin etimology) and it has the
singular form datum. We translated it as date because this was the appropriate term in the
context.
Another term that we have in our texts is depression which is a specialized term used in
several fields like: Psychology, Pathology, Economy, Astronomy. It comes from Latin and we
translated as depresie because is an international term.

Sedentary is the fourth term which represents a life characterized by much sitting and little
physical exercise. It has a Latin etymology form, namely, sedere which means to sit and
it dates from the late 16th century. We translated it as sedentar.

The last term that we found is norm which comes from Latin from early 19th century and
means something that is usual, typical, or standard. It is used in the field of Mathematics,
Geological Science, Sociology. We translated it as norm because is an international term.
 7. Conclusion
When translating a text such as Medicine/Psychology a translator must have a good
knowledge of the topic that is being translated, must be careful to understand and render in
target language the right context as expressed in source language. He also has to have very
good knowledge of grammar, syntax, and semantics in both languages. In our translation we
used some translations methods and procedures in order to make the text translatable.

Regarding the article, we tried to make this subject as interesting as possible, bringing
elementary information about this field, especially about depression and autism spectrum
disorder. We talked about Pshycology, in general. We gave a definition in order to make to
the public to figure out about this domain, we highlighted the technical part of the text and we
developed it by adding features of the text, namely, grammatical, lexical, and stylistic.
Another part of our article contains information about our perplexities regarding the
translation of certain words, expressions even complex sentences and we presented the way in
which Peter Newmark, J.P. Vinay and J. Darbelnet talk about translation methods and
procedures. A glossary with specialized terms of this field is above in order to present an
accurate rendering of the original text.
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