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
The patient information leaflet contains a lot of Latin-Greek medical terminology which laypeople often do not understand. Many studies have been performed that focus on how Latin-Greek medical...Show moreThe patient information leaflet contains a lot of Latin-Greek medical terminology which laypeople often do not understand. Many studies have been performed that focus on how Latin-Greek medical terminology is translated into different languages, looking at different language pairs. However, little research has been done on the translation of Latin-Greek terminology in English-Dutch patient information leaflets. In order to fill this gap, this thesis analyzes the use of Latin-Greek terminology in the English PILs and the popularization strategies that were used to translate the terms for Dutch laypeople. This study poses two questions. Firstly, whether more Latin-Greek terms are used in the English PILs, as many English lay terms are Latin or Greek-based terms. Secondly, whether there is a significant difference in the number of occurrences of popularization strategies containing Latin-Greek terminology, lay terminology and explication in the English and Dutch PIL sections. The results show that more Latin-Greek terms that are used in the English PILs are indeed Latin or Greek-based terms. The second question, however, could not be answered, as the results of the analysis showed similar number of occurrences of popularization strategies. Further and more extensive research has to be done on the use of Latin-Greek terms and popularization strategies in PILs in order for the second research question posed in this study to be answered.Show less
Ever since the introduction of Translation Universals, their existence has been widely debated. Explicitation and implicitation are no exception to this. These Translation Universals, both...Show moreEver since the introduction of Translation Universals, their existence has been widely debated. Explicitation and implicitation are no exception to this. These Translation Universals, both separately and together, have been studied in a variety of genres and text types. This thesis examined explicitation and implicitation in Dutch Patient Information Leaflets (PILs). It looked at how explicit the Dutch PILs were, what the rate of explicitation to implicitation was, and which explicitation and implicitation strategies were used. To study this, a bilingual parallel corpus of English and Dutch PILs of orally taken contraceptives was analysed. The source and target texts were compared side by side and occurrences of explicitation and implicitation were identified, the rate of explicitation to implicitation was calculated and the different implicitation strategies used were determined. The results show a rate of 60% explicitation and 40% implicitation, with 234 explicitation shifts and 156 implicitation shifts identified. Additionally, a wide range of explicitation and implicitation strategies was found, with the most common explicitation strategies being the addition of a connective element, the filling of an elliptical structure and the use of lexical repetition. The most commonly used implicitation strategy, by far, was the use of a hypernym. Overall, Dutch PILs were more explicit than English ones, especially concerning connectives, though English PILs were more explicit in regard to hyponyms. With this research into explicitation and implicitation, we are one step closer to either confirming or disputing these Translation Universals, using the method proposed by Chesterman (2010). Additionally, by researching the explicitness of PILs, we contribute to the existing research on their lay-friendliness.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
This thesis analyzes the techniques applied to translate medical terminology in the Dutch subtitles of three episodes of the American medical TV series Grey’s Anatomy (2005-present, Rhimes). The...Show moreThis thesis analyzes the techniques applied to translate medical terminology in the Dutch subtitles of three episodes of the American medical TV series Grey’s Anatomy (2005-present, Rhimes). The model for analysis is based on the taxonomy of Molina and Hurtado (2002), which distinguishes between fifteen different translation techniques. It was found that, as expected, established equivalents are used most commonly, and that most of these established equivalents are literal translations. This can be explained by three factors: medical concepts and culture are similar in English and Dutch, they have both been strongly influenced by Greek and Latin, and Dutch has been influenced by English as the current lingua franca of medicine. The latter was also supported by the high number of borrowings from English found in the Dutch subtitles. Moreover, it was found that generalization, reduction and amplification are commonly used techniques. These techniques can be part of simplification and explicitation strategies, which confirms the hypothesis that medical texts for a lay audience are de-terminologized. Lastly, the relatively high number of inadequate equivalents has led to a twofold recommendation: the development of specialized AVT training and the compilation of term bases.Show less
