This thesis focuses on the explicitation of Latin-Greek terms in medical brochures that are intended for laypeople. It analyzes the presence of LG terms and the explicitation strategies in English...Show moreThis thesis focuses on the explicitation of Latin-Greek terms in medical brochures that are intended for laypeople. It analyzes the presence of LG terms and the explicitation strategies in English medical brochures that were translated from Dutch in comparison to non-translated medical brochures originally written in English. This study uses a comparable corpus methodology and its aim is to determine whether the translated brochures contain more LG term explicitation compared to the non-translated brochures. This is because research in Translation Studies has shown that the level of health literacy differs among laypeople, meaning that the medical brochures should be written in an understandable manner for everyone (Montalt, Zethsen, & Karwacka, 2018). Making a text comprehensible for laypeople can be done by using explicitation, which is adapting a unit of the text more extensively, for instance by omitting or adding terms. In this thesis, the LG terms found are classified into the following six categories that determine the explicitation strategy: definition/explanation, reformulation, exemplification/illustration, analogy, synonym, and hyperonym. This thesis compares the explicitation of LG terms in translated Dutch-English to non-translated English brochures, because it has been shown that English has had a better influx of Latin-based terminology compared to Northern European languages, that is Scandinavian or Germanic languages (Askehave and Zethsen, 2002; Zethsen, 2004). The results of this thesis show that the non-translated medical brochures in English actually contain a higher frequency of LG term explicitation compared to the medical brochures translated from Dutch. Possible reasons for these results could be that LG terms in everyday English are not as well-known and present as expected and there might exist a discrepancy between what can and cannot be considered lay terms when writing and translating medical brochures.Show less
This thesis aims to investigate how critical book reviews contribute to translators’ invisibility. Lawrence Venuti (2018) presents examples of reviews of translated books from British and American...Show moreThis thesis aims to investigate how critical book reviews contribute to translators’ invisibility. Lawrence Venuti (2018) presents examples of reviews of translated books from British and American periodicals, that illustrate the invisibility of translators (pp. 2-13). Several studies (Fawcett, 2000; Schulte, 2000; Bush, 2004; Valdez, 2009; Gray, 2017; Wardle 2020) have analysed the critical reviews of literary translations in prominent newspapers to ascertain translators’ visibility and image in their respective language fields. To gain insight into the translators’ image in the Netherlands, an analogous research was undertaken by analysing the critical reviews that were published between 1 January and 31 December 2020 in the Dutch newspaper NRC. This study has found that the majority of reviews that discussed translated books (60%), did not indicate what source language they were translated from. Additionally, in 73% of the reviews the name of the translator or translators was provided in a sidebar, but the translation was not discussed in the review itself. A tentative conclusion is that the trend in Dutch critical reviews is to take a translation for granted and to merely discuss the content and the style of the author, frequently supported by using ‒ paradoxically enough ‒ quotes in Dutch (86%). Translators are relegated to a subservient role and rarely receive acknowledgment for quotes that are used in critical book reviews, nor for their contribution towards the success (or failure) of the author.Show less
