Analysis and translation of cancer terms based on the book «Beating Cancer: 20 Natural, Spiritual, & Medical Remedies that can slow and even reverse cancer’s progression» by Francisco Contreras and Daniel Kennedy



Modern medical terminology is one of the most complex systems of terms. Its specific feature is the traditional use of the Latin language, specific abbreviations, and acronyms. In this article, we look at special translation methods of medical terms in oncology on the basis of a book written by Francisco Contreras, the doctor of medical sciences, an international expert in the treatment of cancer, the head of the Health Group of the Oasis of Hope clinic, and Daniel Kennedy, executive director of the Health Group of the clinic. The title of the book " Beating Cancer: 20 Natural, Spiritual, & Medical Remedies that can slow and even reverse cancer’s progression». An analysis of methods for the translation of medical terms in oncology will be made, and also a frequency domain analysis of the most common used transformations in translation of medical terms in oncology.

Keywords: medical terminology, methods of translation, terms in oncology, medical translation

Modern medical terminology is a system of systems, or a macro-thermosystem. The whole set of medical and paramedical terms, as noted, reaches several hundred thousand. According to Davies medical terminology is the study of words used to communicate facts and ideas particular to medicine; it is chiefly concerned with the present use and meaning of such words [1; с. 25]. Medical terminology has its own specific features, such as

– Medical terminology has an extensive and rich history in Latin and Greek languages. In English, about 95 % of the terms are based on classical languages.

– A large number of international terms, because Greco-Latin terms are the basis of medical terminology in all European languages. In the professional medicine language of any country in the world some special expressions are used only in Latin.

– There are two lexical systems, such as scientific vocabulary (classical terms) and colloquial vocabulary [2; с. 174].

Medical terms are divided according to the specific area or practice that they involve, such as cardiology, oncology, psychology, psychiatry. This article is devoted to the research of ways of translating medical terminology in such a special clinical discipline as oncology.

Every year a large number of new terms appear in medical vocabulary, because medicine is closely connected with scientific and technological development. Further development of the language of medicine and its terminological subsystems is due to the introduction of new methods of instrumental patient examination, achievements in biology, chemistry, physics and other related sciences.

Medical translation is one of the most common. Depending on the type of translation, the consequences of a change of the meaning of the source can be different even causing of harm to human health and life. The translation of medical terms is problematic for two main reasons: the first reason is that some medical terms have complex structures and can give rise to various semantic, lexical and grammatical interpretations, through which the job of a translator is rendered very hard. The second reason emerges from a lack of clarity of, or because of ambiguity in, some medical terms or expressions in the SL which, in turn, has a great effect on the translation process. Often such ambiguity derives from the fact that many English medical terms have Latin or other language origins. The problem of neologism and non-equivalence also affects the translation process [3; с. 60]. The problem of the quality of medical translation is very relevant. Nowadays, the creation of a qualified translation requires not only linguistic, but also domain knowledge in medicine from a translator. There are few such specialists, whereas the need for them is growing. Studies in the field of translation of medical terminology have a special theoretical and practical value in the period of rapid development of science and technology. In the conditions of scientific and technical development of the society, the study of the features of the translation of medical terminology from English into Russian is relevant for modern translation studies.

In this article, we consider the ways of translation of medical terms in oncology. Currently, there are many works devoted to translation transformations, despite the young age of translation theory or translation studies as a science. It is not surprising, because this aspect is one of the central, and the knowledge of its theoretical foundations is extremely important in the work of translator. In this study as a basis we took the qualification V. N. Komissarov:

Lexical transformations: а) formal (transliteration, calquing, transcription); в) lexico-semantic substitute (generalization, concretization, modulation)

Grammatical transformations: Grammatical replacement (substitute), sentence fragmentation, sentence integration, word-for-word translation

Lexico-grammatical transformations: Antonymic Translation, compensation, descriptive translation [4; с. 159].

As a basis, we have the book «Beating Cancer: Twenty Natural, Spiritual, and Medical Remedies» written by Francisco Contreras and Daniel Kennedy. This book contains the opinions and ideas of the authors about the theme of oncology and ways to cure from it. The authors' book is based on the results of scientific research and practical activities to help people who suffer from cancer. Francisco Contreras is a doctor of medical sciences, an international expert in the field of cancer. He is the founder and head of the clinic «Oasis of Hope» (Mexico, Tijuana). The second author Daniel Kennedy is a spiritual mentor and an Executive Director of the clinic [5; с. 8].

According to this book, we found terms in oncology, which were translated by one of this translation transformation. We chose the most interesting examples from the book. Basically, these were lexical transformations, such as transcription, transliteration, calquing and lexico-semantic substitutions (concretization and modulation). Calquing is the most commonly used.

Table 1

Calquing transformation of medical terms in oncology

Term	Translation
Cancer patients	Больные онкологическими заболеваниями
Tumor	Опухоль
The National Institutes of Health	Национальный Институт Здоровья
On-Hodgkin’s lymphoma	Неходжкинская лимфома
National Cancer Institute	Национальный Институт Рака
Breast cancer	Рак молочной железы
Genetic Liquid Paper	Генетическая замазка
Protein complex	Протеиновый комплекс
The Hayflick limit	Предел Хейфлика
Colorectal cancer	Колоректальный рака
Noninvasive malignant cells in the cervix	Неинвазивные, злокачественные клетки в шейке матки
Immortal cells	Бессмертные клетки
Human tumors	Человеческие новообразования
Malignancies	Опухолевидные образования
Cancer cells	Раковые клетки
Anticancer drug	Противоопухолевые препараты
Metabolic functions	Метаболические функции
Immune system	Иммунная система
Cancer of the uterus	Рак матки
Cancer of the ovaries	Рак яичников
Primary tumor	Первичная опухоль
Cancer of the small intestine	Рак тонкой кишки
American Cancer Society	Американское онкологическое общество
The white blood cells	Белые кровяные клетки
Abnormal telomerase genes	Атипичные гены теломераза
Immature dendritic cells	Незрелые дендритные клетки
Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs	Нестероидные противовоспалительные средства
Orthodox oncology	Традиционная онкология
Chemotherapy detoxification	Детоксикация химиотерапии
Epithelial cancer	Эпителиальный рак

According to V. N. Komissarov, calquing is a way of translating a lexical unit from the SL by replacing its components (morphemes or words) with their lexical correspondences in the TL [6; с. 89]. As you can see in the table 1. there are 31 words and phrases that were translated from English into Russian by using calquing. Let us consider some of the terms. In some cases, we noted a change in the order of the elements, such as the Hayflick limit — предел Хейфлика, chemotherapy detoxification- детоксикация химиотерапии, abnormal telomerase genes- атипичные гены теломераза. Also, we can found one example where transcription and calquing can be used simultaneously, for instance, immune system — иммунная система. Calquing provides the brevity and simplicity of the equivalent, and also it ensures the internationality of the content of terms. Because of these factors calquing is the most common.

Then we consider such a method of translation as transcription, where we found 5 during the analysis of the original book and its translation. Examples of transcription of terms are listed in Table 2.

Table 2

Medical terms in oncology that have been translated by transcription

Term	Translation
Mastectomies	Мастектомия
Lumpectomies	Лампэктомия
Nucleotides	Нуклеотиды
Immune system	Иммунная система
Metabolism	Метаболизм

According to V. N. Komissarov transcription is representation of the pronunciation of the foreign word with the TL letters [6; с. 210]. Term is a special type of linguistic units which is usually subjected to transcription. Usually the sources of transcription are Greek, Latin or English units.

In the course of our analysis, we can found 5 terms which were translated from English into Russian by transliteration. Examples of transliteration of terms are listed in Table 3.

Table 3

Transliteration transformation of medical terms in oncology

Term	Translation
Oncologists	Онколог
Chemotherapy	Химиотерапия
Mammograms	Мамограмма
Non- Hodgkin’s lymphoma	Неходжкинская лимфома
Carcinogenesis	Канцерогенез

Transliteration is necessary when it is important to observe the lexical brevity of the notation corresponding to its familiarity in the original language and at the same time emphasize the specificity of a thing or concept if there is no exact correspondence in the target language. Especially realities which mean the naming of national cultural objects should be allocated. In the context of large-scale intercultural communication, such naming constitutes a very significant group, and the most common way to translate them in another language is transliteration.

A group of lexico-semantic transformations includes operations involving certain semantic changes. As a result, the meaning of a word or word combination in ST may be more specific, more general or somewhat modified as a way to discovering an appropriate equivalent in TL. So, the main types of such substitutions are concretization, generalization and modulation. Then we will consistently consider one of the types of lexico-semantic substitutions- Concretization which is used in 5 medical terms in oncology. Concretization is the choice of a more specific word in translation which gives a more detailed description of the idea than does the word in the ST [6; с. 210]. Example of transliteration of term is listed in Table 4.

Table 4

Concretization transformation of medical terms in oncology

Term	Translation
Cancer	Злокачественное новообразование
Carnicoma	Раковые новообразования
Malignancy	Злокачественное новообразование
Pancreatic cancer	Рак хвоста поджелудочной железы
Anticancer drugs	Противоопухолевые препараты

As we can see in the table 4. we have some interesting examples with the word cancer. Everyone knows this terrible word cancer, but the word cancer does not always mean a malignant tumor. This term has such meanings as the constellation of Cancer, the disaster, star sign, evil. In this case, translators used the method of concretization depending on the context. The word combination “Pancreatic cancer” — рак хвоста поджелудочной железы, where the meaning of this word is “рак поджелудочной железы”. The pancreas has 4 anatomical parts: the head, neck, body and tail. But in this case translators gave the meaning to this type of cancer, perhaps because of the proposed context. Another word “Malignancy” means harmfulness, perniciousness, wickedness, and also cancer. But the translation of this word like рак, and only in medicine context we need to say злокачественное новообразование or малигнизация. Or the word “Carnicoma” which translates not only like “раковая опухоль”, but “рак молочной железы”.

During the analysis of lexico-semantic transformations we identified 4 types of translation transformations, such as calquing, concretization, transliteration, transcription.

According to the analysis we found that the most frequently used method of lexical-semantic transformations is calquing (31 terms) which means 67 %. Such lexico-semantic transformations as concretization, transliteration, transcription were applied in equal numbers — 11 % (5 terms). Calquing is the most effective method. Calquing provides the brevity and simplicity of the equivalent, and also it ensures the internationality of the content of terms. Because of these factors calquing is the most common.

Another group of translating procedures comprises all types of transformations involving units of SL grammar. Word-for-word translation, partitioning, integration and grammatical replacement constitute grammatical transformations [6; с. 216]. According to the research we understand that word-for-word translation and grammatical replacement are the most common.

Table 5

Grammatical replacement transformation of medical terms in oncology

Term	Translation
Tumor reduction	Уменьшилась опухоль
Chemotherapy detoxification	Детоксикация химиотерапии
Abnormal telomerase genes	Атипичные гены теломераза

Grammatical replacement (substitute) is translator’s refusal to use analogous grammatical units in TT. He tries to render the meaning of SL units by changing the grammatical form of a word, the part of speech or the type of the sentence [6; с. 219]. As we can see, the word combination “Tumor reduction” where reduction is a noun, but in Russian language it is a verb (decline; decrease). In another word combinations “Chemotherapy detoxification” and “Abnormal telomerase genes” the word order was changed.

Word-for-word translation (or zero transformation) is preservation of the syntactic structure of the ST using the analogous TL grammatical forms.

Table 6

Word-for-word translation of medical terms in oncology

Term	Translation
intricate molecular machinery	сложного молекулярного механизма
particular type of common hereditary colorectal cancer	конкретного типа обычного наследственного колоректального рака
in genetically unstable cells	в генетически нестабильных клетках
noninvasive malignant cells in the cervix	неинвазивные, злокачественные клетки в шейке матки
the regression of the primary tumor	регресс первичной опухоли

As you can see in Table 6 there are 5 word combinations of word-for-word translation. It is possible that the number of linguistic units and the order of their arrangement in the original and translation are fully consistent with the use of word-for-word translation.

According to the analysis we found that the most frequently used method of grammatical transformations is word-for-word translation (5 terms) which means 62 % and grammatical substitution (3 terms) — 38 %.

In conclusion, grammatical transformations can be caused by various causes, both grammatical and lexical. In some cases, they are closely intertwined and have lexico-grammatical character. The using of grammatical transformations in the translation is explained by the fact that the Russian sentence doesn’t coincide with English in its structure.

It was revealed that grammatical transformations (15 %) are used less in comparison with lexico-semantic transformations (85 %). It can be assumed that lexico-semantic transformations have linguistic and stylistic features of vocabulary from English into Russian.

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