EVD - The Ebola Virus Disease, una traduzione medica

According to Hoffman, it is possible to subdivide the medical language into levels. Furthermore, those levels do not have to match a social stratification of speakers, but a progressive specification of the language as it is refined as a communicative and cognitive instrument.

Hoffman suggests a vertical and a horizontal subdivision.

- The horizontal division consists in the diversification of two kind of languages applied in a two different contests:

1. The technical and scientific language of medicine, which requires a highly accurate classification based on pathologic anatomy, microbiological and biochemical considerations as they clearly influence the terminology and style of the texts.
2. The language of clinical medicine, which tend to simplicity and practicality. Furthermore, it is characterized by the use of collective notions and less specific terms.

- The vertical division, instead, stratifies the medical language into levels which can be described in four different criteria:

1. The level of abstraction
2. The linguistic style (percentage of technical terms and artificial symbols)
3. The environment (theoretical sciences, experimental sciences, applied sciences and technology, material production, consumption)
4. The communicating parties (represented by speaker recipient: two scientists, an engineer and a scientist, one of the two previous figures and a patient, etc...)