Navarro F A, Barnes J
Servicio de Traducción Médica, F. Hoffmann-La Roche SA, Suiza.
Med Clin (Barc). 1996 Mar 2;106(8):298-303.
Journals that are not published solely in English have the titles of papers translated into English, the international language of medicine. The aim of this paper is to analyse the accuracy and quality of such translations in Medicina Clínica and to assess the influence of the morphology and syntax of Spanish on the English versions of the titles.
Two professional medical translators, one Spanish and the other English, each with a knowledge of both languages, compared the original Spanish and the English translations of the titles of the 292 papers and communications published in the 20 issues of volume 100 of Medicina Clínica. The discrepancies or "errors" were classified in five groups of increasing seriousness.
Of the titles studied, 77% contained some sort of error (458 errors were detected). In 100 titles (34%) there were differences in meaning between the original Spanish and the English translations. Another 72 titles contained serious orthographical, lexical or grammatical mistakes, though the basic meaning was not distorted. Approximately a third of the lexical and grammatical errors were attributable to the direct influence of Spanish.
The English translations of titles in Medicina Clínica contain numerous orthographical, lexical and gammatical mistakes. Serious errors of meaning in a number of translated titles could result in misinterpretation by readers who do not know Spanish. We recommend that the authors should play a part in the translation of the titles, as this should provide a simple and effective mean of improving the accuracy of the translations. Our comparison yielded much worse results than had been expected, which suggests that similar studies with other medical journals in Spanish and other languages would be justified.
非仅用英文出版的期刊会将论文标题翻译成医学领域的国际语言——英文。本文旨在分析《医学临床》中此类翻译的准确性和质量，并评估西班牙语的形态和句法对标题英文版本的影响。
两位专业医学翻译人员，一位是西班牙语母语者，另一位是英语母语者，且两人都通晓这两种语言，他们对比了《医学临床》第100卷20期发表的292篇论文和通讯的原始西班牙语标题及其英文译文。差异或“错误”被分为五组，严重程度递增。
在所研究的标题中，77%存在某种错误（共检测到458处错误）。100个标题（34%）的原始西班牙语和英文译文之间存在意义差异。另外72个标题存在严重的拼写、词汇或语法错误，不过基本意思未被扭曲。大约三分之一的词汇和语法错误可归因于西班牙语的直接影响。
《医学临床》标题的英文译文存在大量拼写、词汇和语法错误。一些翻译标题中的严重意义错误可能会导致不懂西班牙语的读者产生误解。我们建议作者应参与标题的翻译，因为这应该是提高翻译准确性的一种简单有效的方法。我们的对比结果比预期的要差得多，这表明对其他西班牙语及其他语言的医学期刊进行类似研究是合理的。
