A Study On Medical English Documents Translation From The Perspective Of Functional Equivalence Theory With Examples From Interim Infection Prevention And Control Guidance With Focus On Ebola

Nowadays, in order to handle the unexpected crises caused by global diseases, countries are eager to promote medical cooperation, boost the spread of advanced research results and obtain border-free medicine more than ever, and it is medical translation that plays an irreplaceable role in achieving these goals, In addition, the development of medical translation is beneficial for the developing countries to have a further exchange with developed countries, keep pace with the advance of medical science and technology, improve the professional quality of domestic medical workers and advance medical capacity progress of them.Given the great significance of medical translation, the medical docunments translation is paid much attention to by Chinese translation researchers, and the studies on it are emerging in an endless stream. Through the comprehensive survey and analysis, the writer found that there are a great large number of these studies, however, they are not systematic and scientific enough as on the one hand, the researchers tend to just discuss the translation measures against one aspect of medical English style in one study and do not provide comprehensive translation measures which apply to all aspects, including vocabulary, sentences and passages, and on the other hand, most of the studies are based on translators' experience without scientific translation theories, especially functional equivalence theory, as the theoretical foundation and for example, in CNKI(China National knowledge infrastructure), there are less than 15 theses which discuss medical translation under the guidance of functional equivalence theory. In the light of these limitations, the thesis conducted a systematic study on medical English document translation from the perspective of functional equivalence theory. The aim of the study is to discuss how to select proper translation measures to promote translation quality and bring translations up to the standard of the closest natural equivalence under the guidance of Nida's theory so as to show the guiding role of this theory in translating medical English.As for the selection of translation texts, the writer chose Interim Infection Prevention and Control Guidance with Focus on Ebola[1] published by WHO in December 2014 when there is an outbreak of Ebola disease. This document was written by well-known scientists and scholars, and therefore it is not only authoritative in content, but also to typically show the style features of medical English in expression. When it comes to the theoretical framework, a detailed introduction to functional equivalence theory was made and the translation steps, principles and requirements was selected from this theory to guide the study. During the process of the study, in order to make readers have a clear understanding of how the selected parts of the theory play an effective role in translating medical English, the writer tended to first demonstrate how the four translation steps: analysis, transfer, restructuring and test, are followed in practice through analyzing examples, and then in the part of discussing translation measures, a mode of contrast plus analysis is adopted to indicate that under the translation principles of functional equivalence theory, applying some proper translation measures does improve the translation quality of vocabulary, sentences and passages and make the translation meet the translation requirements of functional equivalence theory. And the detailed steps is as follows: contrasting the original translations with the reviewed translations to show the advantages of the reviewed translations, and then elaborating on which principles, measures and requirements are used in the process of adjusting the original translations.The conclusion on the study is that the four translation steps, including analysis, transfer, restructuring and test, should be followed in the whole process of translation and translation measures, such as addition, omission, reorganization, division, combination, etc, should also be used properly according to the translation principles and requirements of functional equivalence theory so that the translation could be up to the functional equivalence standard. In addition, the thesis is expected to has a certain reference value and practical significance for medical English document practice and the application of functional equivalence theory in the field of medical translation.