Scientific Medical Translation Personal Statement

Scientific Medical Translation

Personal Statement

Describe your academic interests and reasons for applying. Include details of work experience you consider relevant to your proposed study, career objectives and relevant non-academic achievements.

Translation. I wish to embark upon further study, with an aim to become better versed in the difficult and often thorny terrain of medical and scientific translation. I say thorny for I have had many diverse forays into the art and science of translation. I have learned that no matter what the material, translation is both an art and a science.

Translation is both a creative yet exact process of rendering language and being a facilitator of the communications process. My language education has taught me what a beautiful and difficult art translation can be, and my work experiences have whetted my appetite to learn more.

A obtained my university degree this summer, in July of 2004. I received a degree in translation and interpreting, the "Mediazione Linguistica" (Final Mark 105/110) from la Scuola Superiore per Mediatori Linguistici Gregorio VII, Rome. Previously, in July 2000 I received my Diploma di Liceo Linguistico (95/100), Liceo Linguistico N.S. della Mercede in Rome as well. Thus, my education has revolved around this diverse and exciting European city, filled with the languages of many foreign-speaking individuals, tourists and professionals.

My university degree thesis was entitled " the casebook of forensic detection," under the supervision of Professor Adriana Bisirri and thus focused on aspects of technical and scientific matters. It utilized a wide vocabulary from the medical and biological disciplines and was a challenge for me, which I believe I was, under the auspices of Professor Bisirri, able to master with a high degree of success. My work on my thesis gave me a strong grounding and preparation for technical vocabulary, as well as a greater fluency in understanding medical and scientific matters.

Although the majority of my higher education has taken place in Italy, post-degree, I will soon begin master's-level study for "Dialoghisti e adattatori cinetelevisivi." I am also going to take the IELTS exam in the British Council. Subsequent to the IELTS, I am going to attend the DELE course and take the Spanish exam, afterwards. In January of 2005 I will begin my "Laurea specialistica" also named "Lingue per la comunicazione internazionale." Thus, my language studies have taken me in body, mind, soul, and voice, to England and to Spain, as well as been based in Italy and in Rome. I have also traveled widely in Europe, the United States of America and Africa.

I feel that obtained an excellent working knowledge of English and Spanish when I studied in 1997 Euro center Victoria of London. There, during a one-month course I obtained General English level 5. I continued with my Spanish language studies over the summer of 2001 at the Colegio Delibes in Salamanca, Spain, and followed this study with a one-month course in grammar and conversation, in 2003/2004 I attended a school called Frances King in London. There, I not only studied General English at the Advanced level, but Business English and Social English as well. This further enhanced my English vocabulary and gave me a greater understanding of the functioning of technical aspects of the English language.

Lastly, my studies from 2003-2004 at the Imperial College of London solidified my interest in medical and technical translation. My course work involved translation both from the Italian to English and the English into Italian.

Nothing is more inspiring to me to bring clarity to exchanges of communication in the languages I love. The greatest cumulating triumph of my translating expertise to date came in 2003-2004, when I became involved on the theatrical stage for six months in an Italian company called the "Magnifici." There, I worked part-time as a translator and interpreter. It was indeed a magnificent experience to work with members of this demanding theatrical profession. Every day was a constant surprise and a constant challenge to my linguistic abilities. I had to put works of great emotion, the off-stage as well as the on-stage monologues, of these fine actors into comprehensible form, structure, and prose for the delight and edification of others and for audiences of all ages.

This constant, daily, living act of translation also highlighted for me the delicate balance between subjectivity and objectivity in the art of translating another's words and thoughts into another language and cultural system of ideas. Beyond decoding the meaning of the source text or voice, and recoding it into the language and meaning of another text and voice, I learned that in the immediacy of life there is always an element between the distinct process of translation, which consists of transferring the words, meanings, and ideas expressed in writing from one language to another, as opposed to the nature of interpreting. Interpreting consists of transferring ideas expressed orally, and thus also encompasses the interpretation and use of the subject's gestures as well as the individual's words.

This is why, although interpreting can be considered a kind of subcategory or subspecialty of the process of translation from the point-of-view of analyzing the processes involved in translation studies, in practice the talents required for these two activities are quite different. My capacities as a translator had already been honed, but my capacities as an interpreter were stretched and developed through this part-time work. However, ultimately I believe that a strong capacity as an interpreter of culture and gestures only adds to one's credentials and abilities as a translator. Interpretation enables a translator to better grasp the meanings of words in their connotative meanings, or in their specific and subjective linguistic contexts, as well as their denotative or dictionary definitions.

This is even more important for someone in a specific field, as in medical and scientific translation, as often words have a different meaning in the technical lexicon of the profession or a discipline then they do in more colloquial usage. For much as I enjoyed my tenure with the theatrical company, for me, even more gratifying than making the arts understandable is the ability to make the often difficult and frightening world of medicine and science comprehensible. To see my knowledge of a language bring comprehension, the understanding of the 'yes, I see,' or the 'a-ha' in the eyes of another is as satisfying as landing a well-spiked volleyball over the net, another of my favorite leisure time pursuits, or of hearing applause while standing on the stage.