ilr.ideasspread.org International Linguistics Research Vol. 1, No. 1; 2018
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the dictionary appeared as phrases, whereas English words appeared as single words. In some cases, no appropriate
Persian equivalents for English medical terms were given.
In another study, Hlongwani (2012) identified several challenges that translators face when translating documents
from English into Xitsonga (a South African language). Those included inconsistency in equivalents, excessive
transliteration, word-for-word translation, i.e., translating words from English to Xitsonga without changing the
syntax from English to Xitsonga, words which have zero equivalence, in addition to excessive borrowing.
In Sweden, Nyström, Merkel, Ahrenberg, Zweigenbaum, Petersson and Åhlfeldt (2006) reported on a parallel
collection of rubrics from the medical terminology systems ICD-10, ICF, MeSH, NCSP and KSH97-P and its use
in the semi-automatic creation of an English-Swedish medical dictionary. The dictionary consisted of 31,000
English and Swedish medical entries collected in electronic format. Rubrics were extracted in parallel language
pairs. At first, interactive word alignment was utilized to create training data from the dictionary. Then the training
data were used in automatic word alignment to help generate candidate term pairs. The researchers found 40
different translation problems in the terminology systems, mainly: Translating the English prefix 'allo' into the
Swedish prefix 'homo' in the rubrics dealing with transplantations; the word 'partial' was sometimes absent in the
Swedish translation. Sometimes an English word is translated into several Swedish. For examples the word
'operation' has 6 different Swedish equivalents and the Swedish word 'operation' has 9 different English
equivalents.
In Arabic, Yaseen (2013) collected and compared a sample of medical terms from seven Arabic translated medical
books, two medical dictionaries and 35 drug package inserts to find out the best translation equivalents in
specialized vs. nonspecialized texts and to identify inconsistencies in assigning different Arabic equivalents to
English terms within a text and across different texts. In addition, she conducted interviews with doctors and
pharmaceutical companies, and administered a questionnaire to doctors in order to identify the different types of
Arabic equivalents that doctors and medical students use when they communicate with each other and when they
communicate with patients. The researcher found inconsistencies in selecting and assigning Arabic equivalents to
the same English terms within a text or across different texts in both Arabic medical books and drug package
inserts. Results also showed that transliterated equivalents were the most commonly used in specialized contexts
among doctors and medical students, whereas descriptive translations were more common in non-specialized
contexts such as doctor-patient communication. Arabic or translated medical books depend on Arabic dictionaries
and tend to use Arabized and descriptive translations a lot more than transliteration. Arabized equivalents were the
least used in both specialized and non-specialized contexts. Couplets were extensively employed to avoid the use
of one-to-many equivalents.
In a study by Argeg (2015), Ph.D. students majoring in translation and professional translators in Libya responded
to a questionnaire test consisting of a set of English medical terms that are key components of medical texts. The
results revealed several problems in translating English medical terms into Arabic such as: use of literal translation
of the prefixes, suffixes and roots in an English medical term or words in an English compound, heavy use of
transliteration, and inconsistency. The problems were due to students’ lack of experience and practice in medical
translation, and to lack of up-to-date English-Arabic medical dictionaries.
An-Nayef (2002) reported results of a survey by the American International Health Council (AIHC) which showed
that the majority of Arab Syrian medical doctors had no difficulty in understanding Arabized medical terms. But
the problem lied in the ‘accuracy and simplicity of the translated material’. Some translated medical materials used
at schools of medicine were found to be ambiguous due to literal translation, use of old, uncommon Arabic medical
terms and translation by authors who are not qualified translators.
In Saudi Arabia, undergraduate students majoring in translation at the College of Languages and Translation
(COLT), King Saud University (KSU), Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, take 18 translation courses in 18 subject areas
including medicine. Although they have access to many English-Arabic paper and online medical dictionaries,
which provide them with a variety of Arabic equivalents within a dictionary and across several dictionaries,
translation of medical texts from English into Arabic poses several challenges to them, one of which is the
availability of multiple Arabic equivalents to some English medical terms. For medical terms such as clinical,
intensive care, polyp, and osteoporosis several Arabic equivalents exist. Students have difficulty understanding
some equivalents and they do not know which equivalent fits a particular context in the text under translation.
Therefore, the present study aims to analyze the Arabic multiple equivalents given to a sample of English medical
terms selected from a variety of English-Arabic medical dictionaries and glossaries to find out the types of
equivalents given to English medical terms and the problems they pose for undergraduate student-translators based
on a content analysis of those Arabic multiple equivalents and as revealed by an Arabic medical terminology test