An Analysis On Problems In Medical Interpreting

Arranged by the internship unit, the author participated in a Talent Introduction Project---"The Israeli Expert Yossi’s Visit to Ningxia"--- initiated by the Ningxia People’s Hospital in September 2014. The author did conference interpretation for the foreign expert, director of the hospital, orthopedic and stomatogical directors as well as some other doctors involved in the program.The cases in this report are mainly based on one meeting of the practice. First, the background, preparation and contents of the practice are described. Second, in line with the typical cases, the author analyzes problems in the progress of the practice, including omissions, the syntactic and semantic misinterpretations, pauses concern with information of the source language, output of the target language, strategy of the target language. In addition, the author analyzes the causes of those problems, such as omissions resulted from incompletely apprehending the meaning of the medical terminologies, misinterpretations caused by poor understanding of the source language, pauses caused by wrong starting and rephrasing. The author does her utmost to come up with some solutions to the problems. For instance, interpreters should make good preparation, including making vocabulary list and memorizing them, grasp the amplification meaning of words, improve memory and master note-taking skills, get familiar with pronunciation of medical words etc. Last, the interpretation is evaluated by the hospital, the foreign party and the author.Through summarization and reflection of the practice, the author hopes to avoid similar problems in future work. At the same time, the author hopes the report can serve as reference for other medical interpreters.