The use of eponymous terms in the field of medicine and difficulties of their translation

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Department of Foreign Languages of the Higher State Educational Establishment of Ukraine “Bukovinian State Medical University”

The use of eponymous terms in the field of medicine and difficulties of their translation

Shalajeva A.V., Semenko I.V.

Summary

Eponymous terms are a linguistic phenomenon that has its own specifics and characteristics that must be taken into account by both physicians and translators in order to obtain correct and accurate translation. Medical professionals know how many difficulties there are in the use of eponymous terms s in the language of medicine and in translation of various medical texts, medical documentation, medical articles of a scientific nature.

The difficulties of translation are associated with the presence of two or more personal names, the synonymy of eponymous terms, the complete coincidence of anthroponyms, different transliteration of anthroponyms and the difficulty of their pronunciation. Terms-eponyms that have several different meanings represent a particular difficulty for the translator.

Key words: eponymous terms, medical professionals, medical texts, translation, difficulties.

Шалаева А.В., Семенко І.В. Вживання епонімічних термінів у галузі медицини та труднощі їх перекладу

Епонімічні терміни є лінгвістичним феноменом, який має свою специфіку та особливості, що необхідно брати до уваги як медикам, так і перекладачам для отримання правильного і точного перекладу. Спеціаліс- ти-медики знають, скільки є труднощів під час уживання епонімів у мові медицини і під час перекладу різних медичних текстів, медичної документації, медичних статей наукового характеру.

Труднощі перекладу пов'язані з наявністю двох і більше власних імен, синонімією епонімічних термінів, повним збігом антропонімів, різною транслітерацією та труднощами їх вимови. терміни-епоніми, які мають декілька різних значень, становлять особливі труднощі для перекладу.

Ключові слова: епонімічні терміни, медики-фахівці, медичні тексти, переклад, труднощі.

Шалаева А.В., Семенко И.В. Употребление эпонимических терминов в области медицины и трудности их перевода

Эпонимические термины являются лингвистическим феноменом, который имеет свою специфику и особенности, которые необходимо принимать во внимание как медикам, так и переводчикам для получения правильного и точного перевода. Специалисты-медики знают, сколько существует трудностей при употреблении эпонимов в языке медицины и при переводе различных медицинских текстов, медицинской документации, медицинских статей научного характера.

Трудности перевода связаны с наличием двух и более имен собственных, синонимией эпонимических терминов, полным совпадением антропонимов, различной транслитерацией антропонимов и трудностью их произношения. Термины-эпонимы, которые имеют несколько различных значений, представляют особую трудность для переводчика.

Ключевые слова: эпонимические термины, медики-профессионалы, медицинские тексты, перевод, трудности.

The problem of research

The translation problem of eponymous medical terminology is that the translation of medical eponyms does not allow a free translation. Translation of eponymous terms is an area of scientific translation, it must be definite and precise. Translation error can have irreversible consequences.

The actuality

Currently, scientific and terminological discussions about the use of eponymous terms are actively continuing, and this stipulates the relevance of the topic under consideration. Linguists, who oppose the use of terms- eponym in medical practice, put forward the difficulties of their translation as one of their arguments. This article is devoted to explanation of some difficulties in translating such terms, to inform a translator about possible mistakes in translation.

Analysis of publications

Many linguists paid attention to the problems of eponymous terms. Judith A Whitworth, Alexander Woywodt, Eric Matteson, E.M. Kakzanova, Tatiana Canziani, Boze- na Dzuganova - dedicated their works to the expediency of using eponymous terms, their advantages and disadvantages. N. Jana, S. Barik, N. Arora wrote about a need for global uniformity of medical eponyms in scientific publications. A large number of linguists examined the problems of translation of eponyms, among them are: Komissarov, P. Newmark, R. Bell, S.V Shvetsova, V. Karaban, Ryzker, T.A. Kazakova, E.V. Smirnova.

However, the problem of the classification of terms-eponyms still remains unsolved. A better understanding of translation problems would make this task easier.

The aim of the article is to analyze and highlight the peculiarities and the main problems of translation of eponymous terms in the field of medicine and inform translators about possible mistakes in translation. The main task is to draw attention of medical men and translators to the problem of this terminological group which includes a great number of terms-eponyms.

The terms are divided into general scientific and highly specialized. General scientific terms are common words that have acquired a very narrow meaning and are used in everyday speech, business documents, and as terms of a specific field of science. Such terms are simple, accessible, understandable.

Highly specialized terms are words or phrases that denote concepts that reflect the specifics of a particular field of science, for example, medical. These terms are characterized by: motivation; accuracy; indifference to context; unambiguity; stylistic neutrality; the presence of a strictly accurate definition; lack of synonyms and homonyms.

Unambiguity and clarity of the scientific term, the exact correspondence to the subject (concept) - these are the qualities that are reflected in the nomenclature codes of different branches of medicine. The term does not bear any stylistic coloring, it is neutral. But in medical terminology, this is only the main trend.

In the term system of medicine, eponyms constitute a separate category, which represent a considerable part of medical terminology. Eponyms do not meet all these requirements and this is considered to be their shortcomings, which complicate the translation of medical texts.

The words of the medical lexicon have absorbed a lot of the history of past eras, taken from other spheres of human culture.

Medicine has long been replete with a large number of eponymous terms. It studies the physiological and pathological processes in the human body, first discovered and described by medical scientists in the field of human anatomy, disease descriptions, diagnostics and treatment methods.

Proper name (anthroponym), being a part of these unique signs, is intended to identify and individualize the denoted concept. Epoch determines consciousness. The long historical stage of the formation of medical terminology had a great influence on its lexical composition. In medicine there are terms that can be considered as relics of past cultural eras.

The mythical proper names from the Latin and Greek languages have played a great role in the development of the terminological system of the language of medicine. Especially widely mythological and the names of the characters of fiction are used in the field of psychology: Napoleon complex, Oedipus complex, Electra complex. [1, p. 507, 506].

Bible stories have also become a source of terms in medicine. The society in which the religious elite dominates, is characterized by the inseverable link of the original medical knowledge with religion. Such medical terms are used not only in the latinized version. Functioning in the framework of a language culture, the terms are subjected to the morphological, grammatical and phonetic norms of the language.

High-quality translation of terms from mythology and biblical plots presents some difficulty because not everyone who works on the translation of medical texts has a broad knowledge of mythology, biblical and fiction literature. Therefore, to understand the terms Atlantis, Tendo Achillis, corona Veneris, the Oedipus complex, the Medea complex, it is necessary to have knowledge of the names of the heroes of myths and legends of Ancient Greece and the names of biblical characters in order to understand the essence of eponymous terms. They can be replaced with systemic terms (first cervical vertebra, calcaneal tendon, syphilitic rash on the forehead), but in the derived words they have already been fixed (atlantociceal, achillotomy, achillotenoplasty, etc.). As for fiction, not all people know that Munchausen syndrome is named after Baron Munchausen - a fictional German nobleman created by the German writer Rudolf Erich Raspe.

Over time, the connection of terms-eponyms with the imagery of mythological terms is lost and they are perceived quite neutrally. Thus, the terms hygiene, venereology, psychiatry, thanatology, panacea have lost their mythological context, they are perceived as designations associated with the real objects of medical science.

A huge layer in the field of medical terminology is made up of eponymous terms of later epochs, which reflected achievements and discoveries in the field of medicine and immortalized the names of doctors who described these diseases or discovered new methods of treatment and diagnostics.

Eponyms can be viewed as a linguistic phenomenon causing difficulties in translating medical texts. Many linguists who paid attention to translation issues pointed out the main problems that translators face. Such linguists as M. Rouleau, N. Rask, E.M. Solnt- sev included the translation of eponyms in the list of major translation problems.

From the point of view of medical terminology, eponyms have besides their positive qualities negative characteristics. They only indicate, but do not reflect the characteristic features of the object being described, etc. However, it is eponyms that are one of the most numerous layers of medical terminology [2].

Many linguists and medical specialists offer to solve the problem of use of terms-eponyms by refusing them and replacing eponymous terms with descriptive ones. But the use of eponymous terms makes the professional speech of doctors more rich, concise and understandable in a professional language environment. Terms such as Alzheimer's disease, Down syndrome, Botkin's disease, etc. do not mislead anyone.

Medical eponyms are most often used to designate the names of research methods, anatomical terms, names of diseases, symptoms, syndromes, reactions, samples, names of surgeries, medical instruments and devices, to designate the names of the species of bacteria and the like.

The translation of eponymous terms causes certain difficulties and the correctness of the translation depends on the translator's personality. This is primarily due to the fact that the translator must be a many-sided and well-cultured person. Otherwise, there may be a situation similar to the one that happened to the stranger from the article Judith A Whitworth who could not answer the question “who discovered Koch's bacillus” [3].

Translation of medical texts is one of the most responsible types of translation, since it requires not only a good command of the language, but often is not fully possible without appropriate medical knowledge. The translator must have sufficient knowledge of the anatomy, physiology and etymology of diseases and be familiar with specific terminology in narrower areas of medicine. The translator of medical texts should be so precisely oriented in the subject so that he could confidently identify the meaning of the term and correctly define its interpretation.

Difficulties in the use and translation of eponyms are closely related to their shortcomings.

The problem of synonymy in medical terminology is one of the main problems and is characteristic of most languages. “Epo- nyms, unlike their terminological synonyms, are brief and do not express the essence of the nominated phenomena in medicine, they are not associated with signs or the internal form of the denoted concept, since the basic meaning of a proper name is in its connection with the denotation. It is for this reason that a synonymous name appears in medical terminology to designate an object or phenomenon, originally called by a proper name, in the structure and content of which signs of the designated concept are reflected” [5, p. 193].

Researchers of terminology consider the phenomenon of synonymy extremely undesirable in the scientific language of medicine.

This problem can be both within one language and between different languages, i.e. different countries and accordingly languages have their own eponymous terms.

Synonymy within one language is represented, as a rule, by an eponymous term and its qualifying synonym, for example Horton' disease, named after Bayard Taylor Horton, an American physician, 1895-1980, has the synonym giant cell arteritis and cluster headache.

Interlingual synonymy is presented by the eponymous terms because each national culture and science has its own traditional eponyms, for example the term for atrophic chronic, progressive skin disease of the extremities is called in Austria as Pick's disease and in USA it is called as Taylor 's disease (named after R.W. Taylor, American physician); the term for ankylosing spondylitis is used as Bekhterew's disease in Russia and Marie-Strьmpell disease in Germany. Denonvilliers 'fascia (described by the French anatomist) and Tyrrell's fascia (described by the English physician) are used correspondingly in their countries to designate the part of the pelvic fascia that separates the prostate and the vesiculae septum from the rectum.

Grave's disease (R.J. Grave, Ireland 1835), known in Italy as Flajani's disease (G. Flajani, Italy 1802) or Basedow-Flajani disease but known in Germany as Basedow 's disease (K.A. von Basedow, Germany 1840), megacolon known as Hirschsprung disease in Denmark, as Ruysch disease in the Netherlands and as Morbo di Battini or Morbo di Mya in Italy [5, p. 230].

Eponymic names that have different anthroponyms, but denoting the same concept, cause confusion in the use of eponymous terms, make their translation difficult and create a significant translation problem.

Sometimes the names of two people coincide completely and then confusion arises, which of the scientists is mentioned in this medical context. In such cases, it is necessary to correlate the name of the scientist and the field of medicine in which he worked and made a discovery or described the disease. It is advisable to find additional information about the scientist to be sure which country his activity is related to.

Pick's disease - disease of the nervous system. (Arnold Pick - Czech psychiatrist, 1851-1924).

Pick's disease - cirrhosis of the liver (Friedel J. Pick - Czech-Austrian physician, 1867-1926).

Pick s disease - a hereditary, congenital disturbance of sphingo- lipid metabolism (Ludwig Pick - German pathologist, 1868-1944).

Pick's disease - atrophy of the skin of the extremities (Philip Josef Pick - Austrian (Bohemian) dermatologist, 1834-1910).

So, the eponymous terms having the same antroponyms do not mean that they refer to one researcher in medicine. Two more examples: Kennedy's disease and Kennedy's syndrome belong to different people - William R. Kennedy, American neurologist and Robert Foster Kennedy, British-American neurologist, 1884-1952. Barlow disease is named after Thomas Barlow - British physician known for his research on infantile scurvy and Barlow's disease is named after John Brereton Brlow, a South African cardiologist [6].

There are many eponymous terms based on the same proper name that do not mean that they imply the same person. This may delude both specialists and linguists. Thus in the article by N.A. Chernova for medical internet conferences we can read “Epo- nyms <..> remind us about the specific contribution of scientists to the development of medical science and practice. For example, the contribution of the German microbiologist Robert Koch in bacteriology and epidemiology development: tubercle bacillus, tuberculin Koch, Koch's triangle.” But in this statement the first two eponymous terms are named after Robert Koch, a German microbiologist, and the third one is named after Walter Koch, German physician and pathologist, whose papers are devoted to the structure and function of the heart [7, p. 68].

Very often eponymous terms include two or more personal names of scientists. This phenomenon is included in the circle of shortcomings which raises questions whether the use of eponymous terminology is expedient. In such cases, the scientific discovery may be the result of the work of several scientists or the disease was described by two scientists independently of each other: Brissaud-Sicard syndrome, Grasset's-Gaussel-Bychowski sign, Favre-Durand-Nicolas disease, Charcot-Weiss-Baker syndrome. The difficulty of translation lies in the fact that sometimes medical specialists shorten eponyms that have several last names to one, but this may distort the meaning of this eponymous term. Anton-Babinski syndrome - a condition characterized by a peculiar delusion of reality in which the blind person denies or lacks conscience of his own condition. This syndrome is sometimes called Babinski syndrome but it has quite another, different meaning the association of cardiac and arterial pathology with late manifestations of syphilis.

The presence of several names creates inconvenience in their translation and use.

There exists such phenomenon when two completely different diseases can be named by one eponym. De Quervain's syndrome may denote both an inflammation of two tendons that control movement of the thumb and their tendon sheath and a subacute, non-bacterial inflammation of the thyroid gland, often after viral infection of respiratory tract. In this case, it is not clear what disease is discussed or described if the translator does not know the scope of this term.

Complicating the translation of the text is the use of an eponymous term in which it is difficult to determine which particular phenomenon is being discussed, if there are several such terms named after this scientist, for example, there is 3 terms of Babinski's sign, 6 terms of Bekhterev's reflex, 3 terms of Kocher's incision, 3 terms of Kocher s method.

When translating, it is necessary to take into account the fact that in different countries anthroponyms as a part of eponymous terms have their own special transliteration inherent only to the language of this country. Difficulties arise when translating such terms into other languages: eponym Bechterew's disease is written as Bechterew's disease and in some texts it is written as Bekhterew's. Filatov's disease, infectious mononucleosis, is also spelled as Filatow's disease; Rot's disease has another variant of spelling - Roth's disease; there are also two variants of spelling: Abrikosov's and Abrikosoff's tumour [1, p. 674, 684, 2453].

Every language has its peculiarities of pronunciation but the dictionaries do not give the transcription of eponymous terms. The absence of transcription complicates their pronunciation by specialists for whom the language is not a native one: Alajouanine's syndrome, Chauffard's syndrome, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, Cruveilhier-Baumgarten syndrome, Bouillaud's sign, Daae's disease. This phenomenon complicates the correct translation of the proper name and its pronunciation, which can cause confusion while exchanging the scientific information. In such cases, it is advisable to adhere to the pronunciation of the name characteristic of the country from which the scientist comes.

eponymous terms medicine translation

Conclusion

Eponymous terms s play a great role in medical terminology. According to some information in some areas of medicine they can range from 3 to 30% of the terminological composition. Undoubtedly, they enrich the language of medical professionals, make it more vivid and expressive paying tribute to those physicians who have contributed to the development of medicine. The task of translators is to prevent mistakes in translation, to give an accurate and clear interpretation of eponymous terms, thus contributing to further emergence and use of eponyms.

References

1. Англо-український ілюстрований словник Дорланда / ред. П. Джуль, Б. Зіменковський. Львів: Наутіліус, 2002. 2688 с. С. 507, 506.

2. Извекова Т.Ф., Грищенко Е.В., Пуртов А.С. Эпонимы в медицинской терминологии. ГБОУ ВПО «Новосибирский государственный медицинский университет» Минздрава России (г. Новосибирск). URL: http://ngmu.ru/cozo/mos/article/text_full.php?id=1365).

3. Judith A. Whitworth. Should eponyms be abandoned? №. URL: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1962881.

4. Федина Е.А. Синонимические отношения в медицинской терминологии. С. 193. URL: https://cyberleninka.ru/article/v/sinonimiche- skie-otnosheniya-v-meditsinskoy-terminologii.

5. Canziani T. The status of medical eponyms: advantages and disadvantages. P. 230. URL: http://www.academia.edu/7721341/The_status_ of_medical_eponyms_advantages_and_disadvantages.

6. Whonamedit: A dictionary of medical eponyms. URL: http:// www.whonamedit.com.

7. Shalajeva A. The Use of Eponymous Terms in the Field of Medicine: pros and Cons. Current issues of Social studies and History of Medicine. Щоквартальний спільний українсько-румунський науковий журнал / редкол.: Т. Бойчук, Ш. Пуріч, А. Мойсей. Чернівці-Суча- ва: БДМУ 2017. № 1 (13). С. 68.

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