The research on making a dictionary of medical terms designed for foreign students in Japan

我们研究小组将24本医学书籍的索引和文本中的单词和短语输入到计算机中。然后，小组选择了7,517个项目作为“医疗技术术语”，包括“基本医学术语”和“临床医学术语”，以及4,155个项目作为“与医学有关的术语”，这些术语用于医学教育的各种情况。（以下“医学专业术语”和“医学相关术语”统称为“医学术语”。）在此过程中，我们对日语教学与临床医学教育之间的术语关系进行了研究，发现日本基金会日语水平测试“一、二级词汇表”中出现的词汇总数为7800个，上述“临床医学术语”中出现的词汇总数为3146个。该小组于1997年春季对25名外国和日本学生进行了问卷调查，涉及7884个从上述“医学术语”中抽取的项目。通过对问卷的分析得出的一个最值得注意的结论是，片假名使外国学生在学习上述术语时比汉字更困难。考虑到上述调查的结果，该术语修订了“医学术语”的项目，并编制了11,639个项目的清单。这份清单将为我们未来的研究提供基础数据，并为在日本的外国学生编写“医学术语”词典提供基础数据。我们将继续修订名单，并研究外国医科学生的术语。

We, the research team, input into computers the words and expressions found in the indexes and texts of 24 medical books. Then, the team selected 7,517 items as the 'medical technical terms' which consist both of the 'basic medical terms' and the 'clinical medical terms', and 4,155 items as the 'terms related to medicine', which are used in the various situations of medical education. (Hereinafter, both 'medical technical terms' and 'terms related to medicine' are called the 'medical terms'.)In the process, we researched into the terminological relationship between Japanese teaching and clinical medical education and found that 394 words are shown both in the "Level 1 & 2 vocabulary-list" (the total word-number of which is 7,800) of the Japanese Proficiency Test conducted by the Japan Foundation and in the above-mentioned 'clinical medical terms' the total item-number of which is 3,146.The team made a survey using a questionnaire in Spring 1997 of 25 foreign and Japanese students involving 7,884 items abstracted from the 'medical terms' mentioned above. One of the most notable conclusions gained by the analysis of the questionnaire is that Katakana couses the foreign students to have more difficulty in learning the above terms than does Kanji.Considering the result of the above survey, the term revised the items of the 'medical terms' and made a list of 11,639 items. This list will provide the fundamental data for our future research and for making a dictionary of 'medical terms' desined for foreign students in Japan. We will continue to revise the list and to research into the terms for foreign medical students.