Medicine in television: implications for translation. The Dubbing of television medical dramas

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to provide a perspective of audiovisual medical translation as a communicative and social phenomenon with direct consequences for the translator’s work. Audiovisual medical translation would be therefore determined by three interdependent dimensions: terminological, social and audiovisual. On this basis, this paper evaluates the accuracy and quality of the Spanish dubbed version of an English medical drama. A chapter of this drama will be analysed from a dual perspective for that purpose: by comparing the English and Spanish versions through the translation techniques employed (translation perspective), and by developing a questionnaire to register the medical assessment (medical perspective). Results obtained reveal some degree of disagreement among the physicians participating in the study, given that the Spanish dubbed version does not meet the quality standards in a significant number of cases.