TRANSLATION OF TITLES INTO ENGLISH IN MED ICINA CLINICA - QUALITY ANDSPANISH-LANGUAGE INFLUENCE

BACKGROUND: 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 qual ity of such translations in MEDICINA CLINICA and to assess the influen ce of the morphology and syntax of Spanish on the English versions of the titles. METHODS: TWO professional medical translators, one Spanish and the other English, each with a knowledge of both languages, compa red the original Spanish and the English translations of the titles of the 292 papers and communications published in the 20 issues of volum e 100 of MEDICINA CLINICA. The discrepancies or ''errors'' were classi fied in five groups of increasing seriousness. RESULTS: 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 orig inal Spanish and the English translations. Another 72 titles contained serious orthographical, lexical or grammatical mistakes, though the b asic meaning was not distorted. Approximately a third of the lexical a nd grammatical errors were attributable to the direct influence of Spa nish. CONCLUSIONS: The English translations of titles in MEDICINA CLIN ICA contain numerous orthographical, lexical and gammatical mistakes. Serious errors of meaning in a number of translated titles could resul t in misinterpretation by readers who do not know Spanish. We recommen d 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 result s than had been expected, which suggests that similar studies with oth er medical journals in Spanish and other languages would be justified.