ABSTRACT
A key area of specialist or technical translation is that of medicine. The moment human beings cross a boundary, all their health problems cross with them and must be transposed into language that both patient and health professional can understand. Medical translating, along with interpreting, is a key fi eld, and like other specialist fi elds, wide in its implications. Medical translation and interpreting are parts of a spectrum of interaction ranging in register from highly technical academic registers in research papers to colloquial and euphemistic registers in magazines and in the surgery. Especially in the case of a patient’s more intimate functions, both patient and doctor may be baldly frank. The doctor/patient interaction found in medical interpreting is outside the scope of this book, and we will not deal with the kind of dialogue that would take place between doctor and patient. While colloquial terms may sometimes be found in doctors’ reports, the language of medical translation tends to be more technical and formal than that of medical interpreting. Medical translation, however, still represents a spectrum of the power relationship between doctor and patient. In the surgery or at the bedside doctors are in a position of power. They have knowledge which the patient does not have, and are able to control the patient’s location, diet, drug regime and exercise regime. Moving along the spectrum the power moves out of the visible hands of the doctor or nurse to the invisible teams of pathologists and radiologists and eventually to the godlike administrative impenetrability of the hospital or the ministry.
