Contrastive Socioterminology Analysis: The Case of Julakan and French of Health

Abstract

Up to now, Julakan -unlike French- fails to ensure efficiently and accu­rately transmission of ideas and knowledge in the field of health, even if the concern is sometimes diseases that exist in the environment where this language is used. The aim of this article is to contribute to the enrichment of the Julakan, or at least to stimulate this enrichment which would help this language become an effective means of communication and knowled­ge transfer. The method was a contrastive analysis of the nomenclature of the Julakan language used in the field of traditional medicine with the one utilized in the French language in the domain of modern medicine. The comparison made shows that even though there are instances of equivalence between the concepts of these two languages, there are also situations where quasi-equivalence and terminological gaps can cause problems at the level of communication and health care services. Faced with this reality, this arti­cle suggests specific solutions for each identified critical cases. In addition, new terms are proposed in order to fill terminological gaps and to enrich the nomenclature of the Julakan in the health domain.