When translating concepts of the ICNP refset, the Danish NRC DK became aware of concepts containing maintains, maintaining, or maintenance
They can be hard to translate, because maintain has several meanings, primarily :
a) To keep up, to preserve, to uphold (in Danish opretholde), e.g. a state, a condition
b) To keep in good condition and working order (in Danish vedligeholde) e.g. a device, a building
The context often makes it easier to choose whether the intended meaning is a) or b)
However, when the term contains one of the verbal nouns (maintenance and maintaining) both meaning a) and b) are sometimes possible, especially when the object is a device.
A concept like 711032008 |Maintaining use of raised edge mattress (procedure)| is rather easy to understand (meaning a) because of the context given with the word use. But it is more difficult to translate e.g.:
47377006 |T-tube maintenance (procedure)|
and especially
710972007 |Maintaining fall safety alarm (procedure)|
We seem to be able to see that SNOMED CT uses the wording "DEVICE maintenance" for meaning b), i.e. to keep a device in good condition and working order while the wording "maintaining DEVICE" is used for meaning a), i.e. to continue using a DEVICE.
Here it should also be noted that in the ICNP Browser a definition of maintaining is given: “Regulating: Keeping something up, retaining something or continuing something”.In ICNPthis concept is parent for all the ICNP concepts with the wording maintaining X.
Denmark has thus chosen to change our translations so "DEVICE maintenance" and "DEVICE care" will be translated in the same way "vedligeholdelse af DEVICE" (keeping a DEVICE in good condition and working order) while "maintaining DEVICE" will be translated to “fortsat brug af DEVICE” (continuous use of DEVICE).
The ICNP concept 710972007 |Maintaining fall safety alarm (procedure)| seems to have been translated differently across different extensions, e.g.
Swedish: skötsel av trygghetslarm
Norwegian: fortsatt bruk av fallalarm
French: maintien de l’alarme de sécurité en cas de chute
Netherlands: onderhouden van valalarm
German: Unterhalten eines Sturzalarms
And we would therefore like to discuss the issue with the members of the Translation User Group, with a focus on the following questions:
- Do you agree with the suggested different meanings of "maintenance" and "maintaining" and did you have trouble translating (some of) these concepts? E.g. in connection with DEVICE?
- Do you also find that "DEVICE maintenance" and "DEVICE care" mean more or less the same thing and can be translated in the same way?
- How should 401137000 |Maintaining equipment (procedure)| be interpreted? It has the wording of "maintaining DEVICE", but has both the parent 133909001 |Maintenance of device (procedure)|and an attribute of Method = maintenance. How should this be interpreted?