Medical English: reflections, translation and analysis of scientific-technical language in medicinal products, a phraseological comparison of British and Spanish patient information leaflets from a linguistic standpoint

Abstract

The main aim of this dissertation is exploring, defining and comparing patient information leaflets, in the hope of shedding light onto the realm of medical communication from the perspective of linguistics and traductology or translation studies, with a keen focus on phraseological structures as well as the very anatomy of the patient information leaflet, its macro- and microstructure. In this project I study the concept of Patient Information Leaflets (PILs) as a textual genre and how this genre encompasses medical texts, a distinctive field claiming its own category as the medical genre. One of the core motivations of this thesis is the interest for medical language as a pivotal point to tackle the analysis of different versions (Spanish and English) of package information, presented as a comparative study to offer the interpretations when collating the both renderings of a PIL.