ASPECTS OF RENDERING MEDICAL WORLDVIEW IN FICTION

Abstract

This study covers the issues of medical terminology in translated fiction, rendering hybrid texts, strategies and tactics of translating fiction through the prism of medical worldview. The object of the research is strategies and tactics of translating hybrid fictional texts with an embedded medical terminological component in the English-Ukrainian direction. The subject of the research addresses the medical terminology in the novel “The Surgeon” by Tess Gerritsen and its reproduction in the Ukrainian translation by Natalia Hoin. The aim of the study is to compare how medical information is transmitted in fiction, reveal the tactics of terminology explicitation in the Ukrainian translation with an account of an idealized nature of the recipient. Terminology has long been considered a hallmark of scientific and technical texts, but today we are witnessing the development of a more diverse discourse typology. Thus, fiction combines hitherto demarcated forms of discourse and produces “hybrid texts.” In a broader sense, we can also state that hybrid texts are those texts that present features of various mixed discourses. Their goal is to communicate scientific information which is a part of the text in such a way that it matches, at least partially, the knowledge scope of the recipients. Nowadays, an indispensable factor of the popularization, as far as the fictional texts with a medical component are concerned, is the commercialization of such works. The authors use medical terminology to exoticize the text and engage the reader’s interest. In case of the Ukrainianlanguage version of The Surgeon, the translator further commercializes the text, making it more accessible to groups of readers without medical knowledge. In general, the intertwining of the medical field with fiction is a very successful combination because medicine, doctors, the healing process hold something mysterious, even sacred. Describing the anatomical aspects of medicine, creating a sense of three-dimensional worldview and the presence of the reader in it, the source and target text authors open the veil of mystery shrouding people in white coats and their lives, both personal and work, become more accessible.