D. S.: Regarding the latter point, my final-year translation students often struggle to distinguish between the “formal terms used by experts” you describe in your Textbook (p. 153) and other registers. Communication between surgeons obviously differs from the way surgeons communicate with nurses and patients. Would you like to comment on this point? Also how do you feel about medical staff using languages that the patient does not understand to keep from causing undo worry?

P. N.: When medical personnel use difficult language to keep information from a patient, we refer to this process as “blinding with science”. Doctors don’t want to worry their patients but it would worry me even more to hear mumbo jumbo.

D. S.: In one of your more recent essays, you quote the Russian theorist Kornei Chukovsky that “translation is concerned not with words nor sense, but with impressions”. Does this have any application in the field of medical translation?

P. N.: I don’t think this is particularly germane to medical translation. A good translator should have a good feel for how a medical prescription should sound, how an experiment report should read. In many cases the theory of Chukovsky doesn’t apply. I think if this quotation does apply overall, it is in the general feeling rather than one specific area. There might be some overt general impression. For example, the uses of the terms hazard or risk is this favorable or unfavorable? Hazard is “riskier” than risk, if we use the semantic differential which states that poison is unfavorable and honey is favorable.

D. S.: You have also written in The Linguist (reproduced in Paragraphs on Translation, p. 159) that “translation is not merely a dualistic process. It has to take account of five medial factors: ethics, reality, logic, ‘pure language’ and aesthetics, of which only aesthetics is not exclusively universal”. Could you relate medical translation to this quote?

P. N.: This is the easiest to answer of all your questions. I can easily relate medicine to all these concepts. First, ethics is particularly important in medical translation-not only that you translate the text accurately but also you have to ensure that you do not injure or kill the patient. This is more important than the author or the reader. If the author gives instructions that are unethical, the translator must have sufficient knowledge to warn the reader, or to correct the situation. All translators need to be temporary experts in the sense they must have access to experts or check the medical aspect of the translation.
As regards reality, this means what is happening-not the language but what the language is describing. Medical translators have to visualize what is happening. They need to ensure that this is realistic. The point about logic is that the text is causally and temporally logical, or sequentially so that if you get words like “therefore” and “then” they have to be appropriate to what is happening. Aesthetics in medical translation means that your text is agreeably written. By that I mean, clear, concise and sounds nice. It mustn’t be over-heavy; it should read as well as it sounds. It would be nice if it were written in an attractive way. The language of thought means that a word is missing in the source language but you find an expression in the target language. All language has gaps but our thoughts do not have these same gaps. In German there is a common expression that literally means “I wish you a happy hand", but you would generally render the expression as “I wish you luck", which perhaps suggests “I hope your turn is coming".

D. S.: Now that you have mentioned the German language, how do you think closer European links will affect the future of medical translation?

P. N.: Basically, English will be used as a lingua franca and medical translation will disappear (laughs). Of course, that’s meant to be a joke. But it is likely that 80%–90% of medical literature (in Europe) will soon be exclusively published in English.

D. S.: And the English that is used may be quite different from what native English speakers write or at least speak, as Sapir might observe were he alive today.

P. N.: I quite agree; it will be international English. Nevertheless, it will be a form of English.

D. S.: As a technical and scientific translation instructor I am often asked who is better qualified to translate medical documentation, the medical professional who is interested in translation or the translator who wishes to specialize in translation. What would your opinion be on this subject?

P. N.: The person who is a doctor would produce a better result. She would make sure the text makes sense, then a non-specialist could touch up the work. Generally I prefer the doctor but of course we are talking in generalizations. If a doctor is a natural linguist, then she might produce a good translation. By that I mean she would be a person with an intuitive gift for writing and composing. But colloquial language, being full of metaphor, tends to skip over details and that might be a disaster.

D. S.: Many translation teachers recommend a graduate course in translation which would build on a four-year under graduate program of scientific or technical skills. In other words, take advantage of the technical expertise and then develop the translation skills at graduate level. Do you agree?


End of Interview with Peter Newmark, pioneering theoretician in scientific translation