The role of applied linguistics in enhancing medical translation accuracy: a corpus-based approach

Abstract

In the era of globalized healthcare, the precision of medical translation is essential for patient safety, professional communication, and international knowledge exchange. Inaccurate translations of medical documents may lead to clinical errors, ethical violations, or loss of trust between healthcare providers and patients. This article explores how principles and methods of applied linguistics, with a particular focus on corpus-based analysis, can improve the accuracy and consistency of English–Ukrainian medical translation. The study reviews current international and Ukrainian research on specialized translation, discussing how linguistic theory, cognitive processing, and sociocultural factors influence translation outcomes. It highlights corpus linguistics as an evidence-based approach that enables translators to identify authentic patterns of terminology, phraseology, and register in biomedical discourse. The paper also examines challenges in Ukrainian medical translation, including terminological inconsistency and insufficient corpus resources. The pedagogical implications for translator training within Ukrainian higher education are discussed, emphasizing data-driven learning and applied-linguistic competence. The integration of corpus methods and applied-linguistic frameworks offers a practical foundation for standardizing Ukrainian medical terminology and fostering the professionalization of translators. The article concludes by emphasizing future research prospects, such as developing large-scale English–Ukrainian medical corpora, incorporating natural language processing tools, and embedding corpus-informed pedagogy into translation curricula.