Medicina tradizionale cinese per la cura del COVID-19. Traduzione e commento di tre articoli medico-scientifici

Abstract

The present thesis expounds the translation of three medical articles about Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western Medicine (WM) and the possible therapies and treatments of mild, moderate and severe COVID-19 illness patients. Interestingly, TCM provides personalized medical treatments based on its theory, characterized by holistic concept and pattern differentiation. The integration between TCM and WM might offer many opportunities and advantages in the field of medicine, as each of them has indeed developed a wide range of treatments that work to prevent the worsening of the disease and to alleviate its symptoms. At the beginning of 2020, when the pandemic situation was at its peak, many scientists and doctors specialized in TCM attempted to track down a possible solution for the treatment of severe illness patients in China. The three articles deal with three different clinical studies which involve two different groups: in the first group, doctors combine TCM with WM for patients’ therapy, whereas in the second group only Western Medicine is used. Respectively, Article 1 focuses on herbs and decoction; Article 2 is about moxibustion, and Article 3 about acupuncture. All articles aim at proving that these new integrated treatment approaches of TCM and WM in COVID-19 patients, help to heal their vital signs and allow them to be discharged from hospital before the expected time. The core of this thesis consists in the analysis of the factors which played an important role during the translation process: I have pointed out some of the common problems a translator is more likely to face in dealing with this kind of texts and I have adopted a familiarizing strategy which focuses on the target language rules, so that the model-reader can easily engage with these papers. Recognizing the crucial role played by specific terminology in medical translations, especially as far as TCM is concerned, this work is supplemented by a glossary allowing an accurate understanding of the translated texts.