Teaching medical translation to non-medical students – a case study with some theoretical insights

This article uses the example of a course in medical translation taught at the Institute of Anthropocentric Linguistics and Culturology, University of Warsaw, to make comments on differences in teaching English to medical students vs. teaching medical translation to nonmedical students and to propose ideas for more effective teaching of medical translation. It is argued that reconstructing the ontology of concepts found in a text is sufficient to provide a successful translation even if the translator does not possess specialist competence in the subject matter of the text. At the same time, the importance of developing translation students’ thematic competence is underlined throughout the paper, and advice is presented on how to encourage the acquisition of such knowledge. The structure of the course is also presented.