Health and Place : Terminology, proper nouns and titles of cited publications in the translation of a text on medical geology

Abstract: This essay deals with some of the difficulties that translation of a technical text may present, more specifically the handling of terminology, proper nouns and titles of cited publications. For this purpose, a text dealing with medical geology, taken from Essentials of Medical Geology (Selinus et al., 2005), was translated and analysed. Medical geology is an interdisciplinary science and hence contains terminology from several different scientific areas. The present study includes terminology within the field of medicine and geochemistry in the analysis. The preferred and predominant translation procedure was literal translation (Munday, 2001:57). Many source text terms have synonyms in the target language. With the intention to preserve and transfer the level of technical style into the target text, terms were analysed and classified as belonging to one of three levels of technical style: academic, professional and popular (Newmark, 1988:151). The handling of proper nouns connected to medicine and geology was also included in the analysis. One common procedure is to use a translation which is established in the target language. The present study discusses the strategies used when no such established translation was found. The procedure of using a recognised translation was discussed in connection to the handling of titles of cited publications referred to in the source text.