Cohesion Shifts in English Medical Texts and their Persian Translation

The main purpose of this study was to explore the issue of cohesion shifts in translating English medical texts into Persian, with a view to validating Blum-Kulka's (1986) hypothesis, regarding the inevitability of the occurrence of cohesion shifts through translation, as well as the consequences of these shifts on the level of explicitness of translated texts. To achieve these goals, 50 translated Persian medical booklets and their corresponding texts in English were assessed–all these booklets were translated versions of BMA publications and kept in Iran's National Library. For exploring the frequencies and types of cohesive devices the Halliday and Hasan's (1976) framework was used. For examining the consequences of cohesion shifts on the level of explicitness of Persian translated texts, the researcher compared the occurred cohesion shifts with the cohesion related explicitation list presented by Gumul (2006), in a descriptive comparative manner. The data of the present study revealed that shifts of cohesion are evident in translation English medical texts into Persian, and cohesion is an area where explicitation is evident. Although not every category of cohesion lends itself to explicitation, lexical cohesion and conjunction are two cohesive devices where explicitation is possible.