Problems of the English Abbreviations in Medical Translation

Abstract

The article deals with the attempt to verify the prevalence of abbreviation-related problems in medical translation over other problematic lexical groups. Medical abbreviations appear extremely fast in modern English, evidenced by abbreviations that are not registered in dictionaries. As a result, the main problem of medical abbreviations translation is that the same abbreviations may have different meanings, depending on the disease, anatomy, or procedure being discussed. The aim of the paper is to study general and nationally specific features of the English medical abbreviations, to survey extra- and intralinguistic requisites of their formation, to determine regularities of medical abbreviations usage in modern English, to analyze peculiarity of classification of abbreviations. Special attention was also given to investigating some basic procedures applicable in translating them. We used such research methods as the method of component analysis of meaning based on dictionary definitions, the method of contextual analysis of the abbreviations, identifying their situational relevance. We also collected and processed nonregistered English medical abbreviations. Continuous sampling of the studied units of scientific and medical texts identified corpus examples. Material for the study was selected from articles, periodical literature on medicine and its related branches of science, from encyclopedic dictionaries. In conclusion, ordering of abbreviation in medicine can be achieved through a more thorough study of medical abbreviations, their proper use in medical professionals training and by means of modeling, which fixes the most convenient, concise and succinct clichés in medical discourse.