Translation Of Medical Texts Under The Guidance Of Back-Transformation Theory ——Take The English-Chinese Translation Of Medical Literature Related To COVID-19 As An Example

The source text of the practice is a selection of four COVID-19-related medical articles from The New England Journal of Medicine and Journal of the National Cancer Institute.Medical texts embody the features of logicality,coherence,accuracy and conciseness,which are manifested in the vocabulary,phrasal nominalization as well as long and complex sentences of the source text.In reference to Nida’s back-transformation theory,this report analyzes the above three aspects which pose challenges to translation.According to the theory,translation is a process of mutual conversion of the surface structure and the deep structure,which can be divided into three stages:analysis,transfer,and restructuring,namely,extracting the kernels of the source language,then transferring them into the kernels of the target language,and finally restructuring them into the surface structure of the target language.Under the guidance of the back-transformation theory,this report finds that:1)for the vocabulary,the meaning of words in the specific context is analyzed by back-transformation,and the appropriate word collocation can be determined by means of amplification and omission;2)for phrasal nominalization,the intrinsic connection of the phrases is made explicit by back-transformation,and the conversion of part-of-speech,transformation of words into sentences,and amplification are possible methods to restructure phrases or sentences;3)for long and complex sentences,clarify the logic by back-transformation first,then adjust the sentence structure by liner translation,reverse translation or division,and finally restructure the sentence with methods of amplification,omission,conversion of sentence elements or voice etc.In conclusion,back-transformation theory can help translators enhance comprehension,clarify logic and avoid Europeanized Chinese.