A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF DISCOURSE MARKERS IN THE TRANSLATION OF BULGARIAN MEDICAL RESEARCH ARTICLES

Abstract

The paper looks into a major discourse element in medical research articles (MRA) – discourse markers (DM). They serve as an important element in achieving translation equivalence. A corpus analysis of DM is performed including original Bulgarian MRA, their translations into English and original English MRA serving as tertium comparationis. The greatest diversity of DM has been found in the Introduction section in all corpora. Both sections – Methods and Results – are much poorer in DM in all corpora. Our findings in the Discussion sections show that English MRA use more DM in logical causeand-effect conclusions, while the Bulgarian ones rely mostly on DM when they compare their research outcomes with prior results. Translated texts’ DM in that section follow articles in the Bulgarian language corpus (BLC), however, we found some diversity in the translation variants.