The translation into Spanish of German medical dictionaries in the 19th century

Abstract

In this work we present the preliminary translation study carried out on two medical German dictionaries written in the nineteenth century and translated into Spanish in the last decade of the century, at a time when scientific translation into Spanish took place mainly from French texts, which makes of these analyzed works quite a valuable source to study science reception in nineteenth-century Spain. They are Albert Eulenburg’s Real-Encyclopädie der gesamten Heilkunde: Medizinisch-chirurgisches Handwörterbuch für praktische Ärzte (1880-1883), «directly translated and arranged for the use of Spanish doctors» by Isidoro de Miguel y Viguri (1885-1891) and Hugo von Ziemssen’s Handbuch der speciellen Pathologie und Therapie (1874-1885), translated into Spanish by Francisco Vallina between 1887 and 1901 under the title Tratado enciclopédico de patología médica y terapéutica. In that translation and adaptation of medical dictionaries, four types of modification are observed with respect to the original texts: synthesis of content, the updating of such, extension or substitution to adapt it to the target audience and correction of the original information for being wrong or even anti-Spanish. We illustrate these modifications by means of examples from the two analyzed dictionaries.