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City Research Online City, University of London Institutional Repository Citation: Saleh, K (2016). The Role of Translation Competence of Medical Experts in the Translation of English-Kurdish Medical Abstracts. (Unpublished Doctoral thesis, City, University of London) This is the accepted version of the paper. This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. Permanent repository link: https://openaccess.city.ac.uk/id/eprint/18243/ Link to published version: Copyright: City Research Online aims to make research outputs of City, University of London available to a wider audience. Copyright and Moral Rights remain with the author(s) and/or copyright holders. URLs from City Research Online may be freely distributed and linked to. Reuse: Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge. Provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. City Research Online: http://openaccess.city.ac.uk/ [email protected] THE ROLE OF TRANSLATION COMPETENCE OF MEDICAL EXPERTS IN THE TRANSLATION OF ENGLISH-KURDISH MEDICAL ABSTRACTS Kazi H. Saleh A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Translation Studies Department of Culture and Creative Industries School of Arts and Social Sciences City University London January 2016 Dedication To Zana: I’ll make it up to you Table of contents Table of contents III List of charts and figures VII List of tables VIII Acknowledgements X Declaration XI Abstract XII List of abbreviations XIII Kurdish alphabet XIV 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Introduction 1 1.2 The rationale behind this study 10 1.3 Outline of the study 16 2 Review of Literature 20 2.1 Introduction 20 2.2 Translation competence or translation expertise 21 III 2.2.1 Translation competence 31 2.2.1.1 Models of translation competence 33 2.2.1.2 Modelling translation competence 36 2.2.1.2.1 General language competence 38 2.2.1.3 2. LSP competence 40 2.2.1.3.3 Textual competence 47 2.2.1.3.3.1 Text type conventions 48 2.2.1.3.4 Subject specific competence 52 2.2.1.3.5 Cultural competence 53 2.2.1.3.6 LSP translation competence 55 2.3 Equivalence 56 2.4 Self-translation 68 2.5 Translational norms 70 2.6 Translation universals 79 3 Methodology and corpus design 87 3.1 Introduction 87 3.2 Methodology 89 3.3 Corpus 93 3.3.1 Corpus design criteria 95 3.3.2 Corpus categorisation 99 4 Terminological aspects of Kurdish specialist medical translation 103 4.1 Introduction 103 IV 4.2 Terminology and Kurdish terminology 104 4.2.1 Kurdish medical terminology 108 4.2.2 Translation of medical terminology and phraseology 109 4.2.3 Medical acronyms and abbreviations and their translation 128 4.2.4 Medical eponyms and their translation 133 4.2.5 Translation of medical terminology according to publication date 135 4.3 Translational norms of medical terminology 139 5 Syntactic aspects of Kurdish specialist medical translation 147 5.1 Introduction 147 5.2 Kurdish syntactic structure 147 5.2.1 Syntactic structure of Kurdish medical translation 151 5.2.1.1 Tense and aspect 152 5.2.1.2 Agreement 159 5.2.1.3 Word order 163 5.2.1.4 Number 166 5.2.1.5 Collocation 168 5.2.1.6 Voice 169 5.2.2 Syntactic markedness according to publication date 171 5.3 Translational norms of syntactic features of medical translation 174 6 Textual aspects of Kurdish specialist medical translation 178 6.1 Introduction 178 6.2 Textual features of medical texts 179 V 6.2.1 Format 180 6.2.2 Paragraphing 186 6.2.3 Sentence length 188 6.2.4 Word count 192 6.2.5 Punctuation marks 197 6.2.6 Thematisation and information flow 199 6.2.7 Cohesion and coherence 205 6.3 Editing and proofreading 208 6.4 Translational norms of textual aspects of medical translation 210 7 Conclusions and recommendations 218 7.1 Introduction 218 7.2 Study conclusions 219 7.3 Contributions of this study 231 7.4 Limitations and recommendations of this study 233 Appendix 1 237 Appendix 2 248 Appendix 3 253 Bibliography 254 VI List of charts and figures Chart 4.1 Frequency of translation strategies in the TTs ...................................................... 111 Chart 5.1 Frequency of syntactic markedness in the TTs ..................................................... 154 Figure 2.1 Initial, preliminary and operational norms (from Munday, 2012, p. 174) 75 VII List of tables Table 4.1 Frequency and percentage of translation strategies in the TTs 110 Table 4.2 Frequency and percentage of equivalence cases in the TTs 111 Table 4.3 Frequency and percentage of transliterated cases in the TTs 119 Table 4.4 Frequency and percentage of ST borrowed cases in the TTs 120 Table 4.5 Frequency and percentage of explicitation cases in the TTs 122 Table 4.6 Frequency and percentage of omission cases in the TTs 125 Table 4.7 Frequency and percentage of translation strategies used for translating medical abbreviations and acronyms in the TTs 130 Table 4.8 Frequency and percentage of medical eponyms in the TTs 133 Table 4.9 Distribution of translation strategies according to publication date 136 Table 5.1 Frequency and percentage of tense change between STs and TTs of the corpus 155 Table 5.2 Frequency and percentage of tense change in the abstract sections in the TTs 156 Table 5.3 Personal pronouns in Sorani Kurdish (Jügel, 2009, p. 152; Amin, 2003, p. 25) 160 Table 5.4 Frequency and percentage of types of disagreement in the TTs 161 Table 5.5 Frequency and percentage of marked word order in the TTs 164 Table 5.6 Frequency and percentage of marked use of plural forms in the TTs 167 Table 5.7 Frequency and percentage of change of verb voice in the TTs 169 Table 5.8 Distribution of syntactic markedness in the TTs based on publication date 173 Table 6.1 Frequency of matching and deviation between STs and their TTs 183 Table 6.2 Comparison between STs and TTs in terms of paragraphing 187 Table 6.3 Sentence length preferences in the TTs from 2007 to 2011 191 Table 6.4 Word count ranges of the STs 192 Table 6.5 Word count ranges of the TTs 193 VIII Table 6.6 Comparison of word count ranges between STs and TTs 195 Table 6.7 Incorrect use of punctuation marks according to publication date in TTs 199 Table 6.8 Frequency and percentage of marked word order in the TTs 201 Table 6.9 Frequency and distribution of marked and incorrect cohesive devices in the TTs 207 Table 6.10 Severity of spelling mistakes in the TTs according to their publication dates 209 IX Acknowledgements First I would like to express my deepest appreciation and gratitude to my supervisor, Dr Karen Seago, for her advice, valuable comments and support that benefited me very much in the completion of my thesis. Without her guidance and persistent help this thesis would not have been possible. I would also like to thank the teaching and administrative staff in the School of Arts and Social Sciences, especially Evelyn Reisinger, Zazzi Psotta and Blessing Theophilus-Israel for their help and support during my years of study at City. My deep sense of gratitude is extended to my family, particularly my parents. I am tremendously fortunate to have you in my life, thank you for your encouragement, support and patience, may God bless you. My deepest gratitude and appreciation goes to my dear husband, Zana, for his encouragement, support and patience throughout these four years. This thesis would never have been completed if it was not for all what you have done for me, thank you darling. I am also sincerely grateful to my uncle Hussein, particularly his wife, Iman, who has always been there for me. I also thank all those who helped me and advised me throughout the period of my study in London. I would also like to extend my appreciation to the Ministry of Higher Education, Kurdistan Regional Government, for giving me this golden opportunity to study in the UK. Finally, I would like to thank my two close friends, Fenik and Umed, who have always been there for me no matter what. X Declaration I grant powers of discretion to the University Librarian to allow this thesis to be copied in whole or part without further reference to me as the author. This permission covers only single copies made for study purposes, subject to the normal conditions of acknowledgment. XI Abstract This study is an attempt to consider the role of translation competence of medical experts who are self-translating medical research abstracts from English into Kurdish. To do so, it investigates a corpus of research abstracts terminologically, syntactically and textually in order to identify and establish the translation competence of the medical experts. The study adopts the descriptive approach to translation for the purpose of its investigation within the frame of which it employs Toury’s methodology in order to analyse 65 originally written abstracts and 65 translated Kurdish abstracts. The aim of the study is to identify the translation competence of medical experts who perform English-Kurdish specialised medical translation. It also aims to identify any potential recurrent translational behaviour that occurs in Kurdish specialised medical translation.