translation skills of medical English.doc

Summary of the Translation of “The Processing of Aging” This translation belongs to one of medical categories. Medical English commonly refers to the special language that is used by medical staff, all kinds of medical departments, teachers, etc. in their clinical services, researches, teaching, and the like. With the increasingly international communication, medical English has played a more and more important role as a medical communication tool throughout the world and thus medical translation has also followed its pace for its function of information exchange. However, a better medical translation may exert a profound influence on the medicine development and help lots of patients out of suffering, on the contrary, a worse one probably results amounts of deaths. Therefore, medical translation skills have caught an amount of attentions. Here this article will focus on the characteristics of the medical context translation, expecting to provide some references to the medical translation development.First, medical context translation pays a lot of attentions on the reference. Reference refers to the semantic relation, in which a word or words are used to enable the addressee to identify someone or something, which includes three categories, personal reference, demonstrative reference, comparative reference. In the translation of “The Process of Aging”, the reference that has been used could be identified as the first two categories: Personal referencePersonal reference is reference through the category of person, including personal nouns, possessive determiners, and possessive nouns, such as you, it, your, its, his, their, they, etc. For example, “Aging is the term for the process that causes organisms to be more likely to die as they age.” “衰老”一词指的是生物体随年岁的增长而变得更可能死亡的一种过程。 In the English sentence, “they” refers to “organisms”, so that the translation of Chinese version should locate to the specific information that “they” stands, rather than to translate “they” into “他们” directly, otherwise, the Chinese version may not fit to the normal expression. Demonstrative referenceDemonstrative reference is reference by means of location, on a scale of proximity, such as this, these, that, those, etc. For instance, “Since mechanisms in the brain probably monitor dietary intake and serve as controllers of cellular aging rates, the study of these, rather than of lifelong dietary modification, seems a likely course for research aimed at making it “take 70 years to reach 60”. 由于脑的机制很可能监控着事物的摄入，起着控制细胞衰老速度的作用，对脑的机制而不是对终身食物限制的探索，看来是研究如何过70年才到达60岁状态的适当途径。In this sentence, the translators have to understand what the “these” refers to, and the correct meaning of it, so that they can produce an accurate translation sentence. Second, medical context translation employs lots of passive voice in English version , which manifests the objectivity, accuracy of the medical science, for the medical articles emphasize the recounting and analogy of medical facts. However, the Chinese version of medical stuff usually uses active voice, rarely passive one. For example, Aging in most animals can be readily modified by the simple process of limiting caloric intake.大多数动物的衰老可以很容易的单纯用限制热量摄入的过程来加以减慢。Such observations suggest that rate of aging in man could be retarded. 这些观察资料提示，人的衰老速度是可以减缓的。Human life can probably be prolonged little by overcoming single diseases, with the possible exception of arterial disease. 攻克单一的疾病，可能除动脉疾病外，大概不会使人的寿命延长多少。It is not that aging itself has been postponed. 不是衰老本身推迟了。Third, in the medical context translation, some sentence patterns of mutual translations are very useful because a simple sentence pattern may compose a long, complex sentence, or even passage, so that the pattern could save some time for the translators and guarantee the translation quality that seems professional. For instance, One question needs to be settled is in man and other mammals whether the accumulation of damage is primarily concentrated on non-dividing cells such as neurons; in dividing cells which may become damaged in the process of successive divisions; in structural materials such as collagen ( a protein in fibrous connective tissue); or in the program of mans physiology. 要弄清的一个问题是：在人和其他哺乳动物中，损伤的积累主要集中在非分裂细胞中（如神经元）；还是在分裂细胞中（这些细胞在连续的分裂中可能造成故障）；在结构性物质中（如胶原，即纤维结缔组织中的一种蛋白质）；还是在人体生理的规定程序中。The pattern is “One question needs to be settled is in whether; in” “要弄清的一个问题是：在中，还是在中；”In conclusion, those characteristic in the context translation above are mostly on the base of the differences theory between English and Chinese, thus that of study contributing a lot to the medical context translation. In addition, those mentioned above merely a small piece for the medical translation field, and other characteristics of medical English and translation skills also could help translators as well. But a good understanding of translation skills and differences between medical English and