early days and casualties of medical translation services
TRANSCRIPT
Early Days and Casualties of Medical Translation Services
Medical translation is a relatively new field in the translation industry. As
compared of other types of translations in different
fields, medical translation is a much more difficult
services offered by language translation firms.
Early Days of Medical Translation
Before medical translation became an official field in the translation business,
the need to translate pharmaceutical and healthcare documents was generally
answered by the medical staff. However, this means another set of duties for them
apart from their regular medical practices.
Before, it would get very difficult for the medical staff to concentrate on their primary job of
medical consultation, along with the challenging job of translating complicated medical
documents. Plus medical professionals are not necessarily linguists or speak more than one
language, and medical translation require that the individual that is translating the document has proficiency in both the language. It would
also become very difficult for patients who were not fluent in English language to understand the
text that had not been translated with clinical efficiency.
Casualties that Occurred Due to Lack of Sufficient
Translation Services
The lack of professional translation service in the field of medicine have resulted in
many casualties in the past. Credible healthcare organizations have to face
lawsuits and embarrassment due to the lack of technical expertise in the healthcare field.
It is extremely saddening that patients have to face severe adverse reactions because of misinterpretation of medical
terminologies in their documents. There have been
many cases where a patient has lost his life due to
mistranslated documents or misunderstanding of text.
• Therefore it becomes very necessary for medical organizations to hire professional medical translators
that have the qualifications and experience to manage the complexities and challenges that arise when translating medical documents. Even those
companies that provide professional translation services have identified the
growing necessity for translating medical documents.
• High quality medical training is provided to qualified and proficient linguists in multiple languages. Today many of the medical translation needs are addressed
by online medical translation agencies.
Freelance VS Organizations
Freelance medical translators cost a lot less than translation agencies; however it must be understood that
translating medical documents is a very complex discipline; even though the freelancer might be very good
in languages, it is improbable that he would adept all medical terminologies. However medical organizations work in teams so any deficiency left by one translator is easily fulfilled by another. The translators can give each
other feedback and learn from the valuable output.
Experience of the Agency
Even if you decide on hiring an agency to translate the medical documents, not all agencies come with credible experience. The expertise and experience both must be taken into account when deciding on
a medical translation service. The safest thing a medical facility can do is to give the job to the
organization that has an experience of at least ten years and many credible companies as its clients.
To check out a medical translation service, go to
professional translation services