There is a need today for the formation of national terminology, compiling terminological dictionaries that would meet world standards, in order to bring the national terminology to the high level. It also depends on the correct reproduction of borrowed terms in Ukrainian, their proper use, etc.
The development of rehabilitation terminology is accompanied by the development of the industry itself. We consider the rehabilitation term as a word or phrase which denotes a special professional concept of this branch, the meaning of which is reflected in the definition, and which is an integral part of the terminology of this industry. The terms of medical, social-psychological, physical rehabilitation / physical therapy are included in the concept of “rehabilitation” (nowadays the term “physical therapy” displaces the term “physical rehabilitation” more actively). We believe that a specialist in physical rehabilitation or physical therapist must speak at least one of the main foreign languages, so that he could get acquainted independently with the latest advances in medicine, rehabilitation and prosthetics.
A. M. Hertsyk emphasizes that “terminological problems of physical rehabilitation are still far from being resolved and belong to priority issues that industry science faces”. The lack of a translated dictionary is one these problems in Ukraine. Physical therapists and philologists should work together to compile such dictionaries, because, if only one industry expert is engaged, it becomes impossible to avoid certain gaps, inaccuracies and mistakes. The accuracy of the term translation is extremely important. The analysis of the problems that we have encountered while working on the French-Ukrainian dictionary of rehabilitation confirms the relevance of the article.
The purpose of this work is to analyze the problems which occurred during the translation of rehabilitation terms from French into Ukrainian. The tasks of the article include searching the ways to translate the rehabilitation terms into these languages properly.
It has been advised in the article “Principles of Concluding the French-Ukrainian and Ukrainian-French Dictionary of the Rehabilitation Industry” to divide rehabilitation terms in the dictionary into five groups: Abbreviations; Means and Methods of Rehabilitation, Devices and Apparatus; Professions; Classifications, Scales and Tests; Defects, Disorders and Diseases. The work on the formation of terms register in French has lasted since 2012. The interim results concerning the etymology of terms, abbreviations, eponyms, toponyms, borrowings, the names of rehabilitation means and methods, the main requirements for rehabilitation terms and research methodology have been reflected in the relevant publications.
The division allowed to hold a thematic classification of rehabilitation terminology; to set the number of terms that belong to one group or another; to determine where exactly a borrowing is most frequently used and why; the productive models of term derivation.
We deliberately refused to use anatomical terms in the dictionary (the only exceptions are those included in the terminology of the industry). In the future, the dictionary can be used for compiling a large French-Ukrainian medical dictionary, since its absence was particularly noticeable in our work.
The industry abbreviations became the most difficult in the translation process – we were searching for decoding in the French Explanatory Dictionaries for Physical Rehabilitation / Therapy, in scientific articles, textbooks and on Internet resources, sometimes a verbal translation was offered, since there were practically no translation options for an appropriate abbreviation in the Ukrainian language. A significant number of abbreviations to describe services, centers, federations, societies, councils demonstrated the attitude of the French Republic to its citizens with certain disadvantages and limits – Ukrainian officials and employees involved in rehabilitation, functional recovery and social integration of disabled people should learn from the experience of their French colleagues; to carry out appropriate reforms; to improve the work of rehabilitation specialists in practice, and not just in words.
French terminology has many English borrowings, some of them (empowerment, feeder) have been translated descriptively; others, by direct borrowing, have already ‘entered’ the Ukrainian language (rollator / walker, flutter / respiratory simulator); some more like ‘feeder’ will soon appear in the language (we asume that will happen when the relevant specialists begin to use them actively in the scientific communication).
The French terminology of rehabilitation is also characterized by synonymy among the terms for defects, disorders and diseases, as well as means and methods of rehabilitation – in such cases, the translation should find the best translation option. The prospects for further research will deal with a more detailed analysis of the translation problems of scales, tests and classifications.