LINGUIST List 6.1006

Tue Jul 25 1995

Qs: Medical discourse, English trans of idioms

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdartam2000.tamu.edu>

Directory

1. Kersti Bo"rjars, Q medical discourse
2. , English Translations of Foreign Idioms sought

I'm not sure whether Linguist subscribers are likely to know this kind of
thing, but I thought I might have a go.

I have a lovely GP (for people not familiar with the English system, a
"family doctor" or "house doctor") who, when she heard I was a linguist,
asked me to help her with some references. She is involved in training GPs
and also in developing course books on "patient contact".

She wanted to know whether there was any work done on how patients and
doctors talk to each other. So, I expect some literature on discourse
analysis of this type of conversation is what she is looking for. However,
she also wanted to know whether there was any literature on how patients
react to certain words, why they have very negative connotations with a
certain word etc. Is there any research on this?

I would really appreciate your help because she is such a nice GP, and I
promised I'd have a look for literature.

Thanks for your help.

Kersti

*******************************************************

Kersti Bo"rjars k.e.borjarsman.ac.uk
Department of Linguistics
University of Manchester
Manchester M13 9PL Tel: +44-(0)61-275 3042
UK Fax: +44-(0)61-275 3187

Hi there,
I'm looking (just for fun, really ...) for English translations
of "foreign" idioms, where this translation uses different words
from the same idiom in English, i.e. I don't want things like:

 EN: To kill the goose that lays the golden eggs -->
 FR: Tuer la poule aux oefs d'or

which boils down to the same thing, really.

What I'm after would be sthg like:

 EN: A miss is as good as a mile -->
 Swedish: "Close shoots no rabbits"

or:

 EN: That's nothing to write home about
 Swedish: "You wouldn't hang that on your Christmas tree"

which expresses the same idea in different terms. A Swedish friend
gave me those, and we use the translations now when appropriate
inst. of the "boring" old English alternatives, just for the crack!

Anyway, I think you get the idea of what I'm after. Examples gratefully
received, from non-European languages also.

Many thanks,

Andy.