Angloabstraction of Japanese Medical Literature: Translators on the Trail of a Goatkiller
Session overview
Have you ever seen a quarter-page English abstract buried amidst pages of kanji and kana in a Japanese journal article? Such abstracts may seem easy to dismiss, but the purpose of this talk is to convince that you that they are gateway to narratives in medical literature, and the challenge of translating a story, and then slimming it down to fit into that quarter-page is never dull. We will work through a narrative on an infected goat, as told in two abstracts, with interactive exercises designed to recreate decisions the translators had to take. The speaker will argue that the translation and summarization skills behind those decisions are surely transferable from abstracts to any area of biomedical translation.
Speaker Profile
Henry Smith teaches medical English at the Joint Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Kagoshima University (with a focus on medical writing and translator). Before that, he worked as a translator and editor for the pharmaceutical industry in both in-house and freelance settings. His shift to biomedical translation in Japan came after a stint as a computer engineer in London, and was the result of a chance job interview. He has never regretted the move, and hopes to share his enthusiasm for biomedical translation (and abstracts and goats) with a wide audience ranging from novices to veterans in this talk