Access to health in an intercultural setting: the role of corpora and images in grasping term variation

Maribel Tercedor-Sánchez ,Clara Inés López Rodríguez

doi:10.52034/lanstts.v11i.306

Abstract

Medical concepts can often be lexicalized in several ways depending on aspects such as the facet of the concept being underlined or the particular communicative setting in which the concept is being used. This feature of terminology is known as terminological variation. In this paper we consider terminological variation as a tool to improve interlinguistic and intercultural communication, a key issue in the provision of universal access to health care. To facilitate the identification and analysis of terminological variation, the paper also proposes some search strategies to highlight this phenomenon in corpora, the main source of terminological information. Finally, images are proposed as a key issue in the localization process needed to bridge communication gaps between health care providers and lay audiences. The data used in the paper are taken from an international cooperation project aimed at providing health providers in Yucatan, Mexico, with materials and training in intercultural communication for healthcare mainly in Spanish and Mayan, and from a research project on lexical variation .

Highlights

Universal health access is a basic right that is far from being accomplished due to economic, language and cultural barriers2 which lead to difficult access to health care and poor communication between patients and health professionals
In many places, such as the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, it is often the case that mainstream health care based on Western medicine coexists with traditional culture-based practices and this means that interculturality is a key issue in succeeding in the provision of healthcare
Images are proposed as a key issue in the localization process needed to bridge communication gaps between health care providers and lay audiences, and we illustrate this with examples from our cooperation project in the Yucatan peninsula

Summary

Introduction

Universal health access is a basic right that is far from being accomplished due to economic, language and cultural barriers which lead to difficult access to health care and poor communication between patients and health professionals In many places, such as the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico, it is often the case that mainstream health care based on Western medicine coexists with traditional culture-based practices and this means that interculturality is a key issue in succeeding in the provision of healthcare. To obtain, process and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions and follow instructions for treatment” In this context, translators are essential in the crosslinguistic and crosscultural mediation that often takes place in medical settings where there may be asymmetries of medical knowledge between health professionals and patients, as well as cultural and linguistic differences due to different national identities. Our data are extracted from the methods and results of research in this cooperation project entailing the production of Mayan and Spanish audiovisual materials for the promotion of health care in the Yucatan peninsula, and in the context of a research project on terminological variation aimed at the study of this phenomenon from a communicative as well as a cognitive perspective

Culture and medical knowledge in healthcare communication

RESULT

Dialectal variation

Images triggering term variation in patient-health provider communication

Findings

Conclusions