Medical and scientific terms in Maltese

As the medical world continues to redefine certain words, it is be­coming ever more difficult to find a correct word in Maltese for certain technical ones in English. There is substantial debate going on whether technical terms should be kept in the original English or be translated into the Maltese vernacular. However, it is extremely hard to find alternatives in Maltese for some medical terms. Let’s start with a few examples:

Test kit: There is really no word in Maltese for the term test kit. A loose translation would be kit għat-testijiet. Ideally, this term should remain in English.

Rectum: Again, no word exists for this organ in Maltese although there are some words that can make up such as it-tarf tal-musrana. In this case, the English word can also be desirable here.

Carbohydrates: There is debate whether this word should be left in English or translated literally to karbo-idrati, which is derived from the Italian language, as is often done with many terms. Although this is technically correct, the English term sounds far better.

There are other words such as musrana il-kbira, which is a proper translation for colon.

Still, several other words of a much more technical nature struggle to provide a Maltese alternative.

Using Maltese words instead of English might make it easier for the ordinary patient to understand while medical matters are being explained to him/her besides making a better sounding conversation when medical professionals are talking about medical subjects in Maltese on television.

The National Council for the Maltese Language issued a document for discussion in 2008 where the subject of translation from English to Maltese was given a pretty detailed run-through with a large number of academics and authors voicing their views.

However, notwithstanding the many opinions brought forward, there are still no clear guidelines how this problem should be tackled.

The document also included an exhaustive list of words extracted from a Maltese newspaper over some months that were the literal translations of English words. Several were pretty obvious phonetic translations, which sound quite cheap and shabby – konkrit and kompjuterizzat come to mind immediately.

A translation source who works for the EU explained that, so far, they have only tackled chemical substances but there is a general tendency to use Italian as a base in this field (French is also very helpful). Other sources admitted it is not all that easy finding the correct term in Maltese.

More often than not, translators directly translate terms into the local written alphabet, thus eliminating their need to find a term in our language because the foreign word is understood by everyone and is assimilated in everyday life. A typical case in point is the word amphetamine, which, when translated into Maltese, is written amfetamini. Obviously, there is no such word in Maltese with that description so the meaning has to be taken directly from the English word.

With an army of Maltese translators in Brussels and Luxembourg turning huge volumes of technical terms into Maltese, the problem has undoubtedly only become bigger.

It is obvious that Maltese is an entirely unique language and it should be treated as such. All translation projects with Maltese as a target language should be carried out by native speakers.

However, proper guidelines for medi­cal words should be introduced without delay as even professional article writers have no guidance when faced with a myriad of technical terms to use and write about. Of late, many drug companies have been translating the package inserts of medicines into Maltese language, which is a good step but highlights the problem of lack of guidelines in translating scientific jargon into Maltese.

Dr Grech is a family doctor.