Employing Genre Analysis and Parallel Texts as a Guide to Translating Medical Research Articles between Chinese and English

Abstract

Despite technical and scientific texts constituting a considerable proportion of translated materials worldwide, the translation of such texts, particularly academic texts in medical science, remains understudied. Some translators may be unfamiliar with specialist medical and pharmaceutical terminology or lack knowledge about translation conventions. This article examines the bi-directional translation of pharmaceutical research articles between English and Chinese, providing insights to translators experiencing these problems. We analyse the genre’s features in both languages and locate similarities and differences via recourse to parallel texts. The findings and our approach can be generalised to the translation of texts of this kind, addressing certain translation problems in an evidence-based way.