Medical Translation

VICENT MONTALT

Translation can be classified in a variety of ways, mainly by type (technical, legal, etc.),
mode (written, audiovisual, etc.), method (literal, free, etc.), and the nature of the process
(professional, pedagogical, etc.). In the professional arena, medical translation refers to
a specific type of translation that focuses on medicine and other fields closely related
to health and disease such as nursery, public health, pharmacology, veterinary science,
psychiatry, psychology, molecular biology, and genetics. Medical translation shares a con-
siderable number of key concepts, methods, and resources with the different types of
medical interpreting.
English is the main source language in medical translation practice because most bio-
medical research is published originally in English, and then transferred to clinical practice
and education, and exported to other languages and cultures. For the same reason, English
is an important target language: biomedical researchers from all over the world need to
publish their results in English if they want to make them known to the international
community.

A Brief Historical Overview

Medical translation has existed since the oldest forms of cuneiform writing on clay tablets
in Ancient Mesopotamia. Archeologists have found a dictionary in Sumerian, Ugaritic,
Akkadian, and Hurrian dating from around 1300 BCE containing medical information in
its prescientific form, together with other kinds of data about mathematics, astrology,
agriculture, and city administration.
In fifth-century BCE Greece we find the Corpus Hippocraticum (Hippocrates et al.), a body
of texts that inspired further study and spread to other languages and cultures in subse-
quent centuries. Some 400 years later, Galen was one of many medical authors who based
their work on the Hippocratic tradition and produced a vast body of medical knowledge
which, in its turn, would be further studied and translated, giving rise to new knowledge
beyond its original frontiers. Greek medicine was conveyed to Rome by translators, many
of them physicians (Fischbach, 1993, p. 96), such as Aulus Cornelius Celsus, who lived in
the first century AD.
In the ninth century AD much of Galen’s work was translated into Arabic at the House
of Wisdom in Baghdad—in particular, Hunayn ibn Ishaq translated from Greek and Syriac
into Arabic some 129 works by Galen. According to historian of medicine López-Piñero
(2000, pp. 81–2) the Arab world was crucial in the development of medicine in the Middle
Ages. Between the eighth and ninth centuries, it assimilated the Greek tradition in com-
bination with some elements of classical Indian medicine, all of which involved a great
effort of translation into Arabic. The task of translators went far beyond just translating.
As another historian of medicine has put it, “In order to make the Greek tradition more
accessible, understandable, and teachable, Islamic scholars ordered and made more sys-
tematic the vast and sometimes inconsistent Greco-Roman medical knowledge by writing
encyclopedias and summaries” (Savage-Smith, 2001).

The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Edited by Carol A. Chapelle.

Between the ninth and the 12th centuries, Arab translations were in turn translated into
Latin, together with commentaries added by other Arab scholars in the intervening years
(Montalt, 2005). The Christian Gerard of Cremona and the Jew Faraj ben Salim are two
well-known examples from this period, in which the School of Translation of Toledo became
the center of the Western assimilation of the Arab legacy. In the view of Savage-Smith
(2001), medieval and early modern scholars in Europe drew upon Islamic traditions and
translations as the foundation for their medical studies. It was, then, through Arab trans-
lation that the West learned of Hellenic medicine.
In subsequent centuries, medicine gradually turned into a scientific discipline and made
huge progress, generating an ever-increasing amount of information as well as compelling
needs for knowledge transference, international communication, and translation. In more
recent times, health care is increasingly seen as a fundamental right and a basic social
concern. In a globalizing world, translators need to respond flexibly to the challenges posed
by changing needs in national and international health organizations. Paraphrasing Fischbach
(1993, p. 100), we can say that translation has been the great pollinator of medicine through-
out the centuries and across many different languages and cultures.

The Scope and Specifics of Medical Translation

Traditionally, medical translation has been viewed mainly in terms of highly specialized
texts and the terminological problems posed by them. In current professional practice,
however, medical translation is not restricted to highly specialized genres, such as original
articles or review articles published in biomedical research journals, but embraces many
other communicative events in contexts ranging from clinical practice to education to
popularizations of all kinds. Online information for patients, commentary on videos of
surgical operations used in medical training at universities, and television documentaries
about medical innovations addressed to the general public all fall within the ambit of
medical translation, which is no longer limited to the written mode but includes audiovi-
sual and online, digital formats as well.
As far as medical knowledge is concerned, the core of medical translation is formed by
the different specialties of internal medicine, obstetrics, gynecology, orthopedics, pediatrics,
psychiatry, surgery, and pharmacology; that is, the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment
of any disease affecting any part or function of any bodily system, including mental dis-
orders. Medical translation also encompasses complementary and alternative medicine
such as homeopathy, naturopathy, or acupuncture.
Some medical translations may involve such specialized topics that they are difficult for
a translator without a medical background to understand. According to Montalt and
González (2007, p. 20) the medical translator’s priority is to deal accurately with factual
complexity. Lack of previous knowledge can be a source of misunderstanding, which may
result in translation errors that can have serious consequences for the health of patients.
But as Wakabayashi points out (1996, p. 357), “lack of formal medical training is not nec-
essarily an insurmountable obstacle to the budding medical translator. What is essential
is not a medical degree, but a broad understanding of the fundamentals and knowledge
of how to acquire, in the most efficient manner, an understanding of other elements as
and when necessary.” There are basically two ways of acquiring that knowledge: through
documents and other resources and with the help of subject matter specialists. In the
era of the Internet, there is an immense wealth of medical information available for the
translator—most of it free—from online databases of research abstracts, such as Medline,
to virtual communities of professional translators who share their expertise and resources
and often work collaboratively.
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The value of medical texts lies in the quality and relevance of the factual information
they contain. The quality of medical translations, therefore, depends very much on how
accurately and coherently the content of the source text is represented in the target text.
It is characteristic of medical texts that they are seldom written by professional writers
and by people whose mother tongue is English. Consequently, the quality of the source
texts is often not as good as one would expect in other types of translation, such as literary
or journalistic translation. Thus a critical and responsible attitude is required of the trans-
lator, whose main purpose is to write a target text that is reliable and truly functional for
the target readership.
The task of the medical translator is also affected by the ethical code of medicine and
health care. Making sure that no mistakes in the target text put patients’ lives at risk is
paramount. Confidentiality is also important, especially when dealing with histories,
informed consents, or drug development documentation. Last, but not least, there must
be respect, awareness, and sensitivity toward patients, whether this concerns their medical
conditions or their linguistic and cultural backgrounds.

Medical Genres

Understanding the content of the source text is necessary but not, of itself, sufficient to
produce reliable and adequate translations. Knowledge about how texts work formally,
socially, and cognitively in the two languages and cultures involved is also required. For
example, it is relevant for medical translators to know how patient information leaflets
may vary formally according to different legislation in different countries or regions. The
same can be said about highly specialized genres such as biomedical patents or original
articles in research journals. Translators who are familiar with their typical structure, tenor,
terminological usage, and other conventions can more confidently predict text progression
and anticipate possible translation problems. They will have a better appreciation of the
overall context and will find it easier to generate appropriate renderings for the target text
and select more quickly from among them. Familiarity with genres can also be useful when
adapting texts and writing original texts.
Medical genres can be grouped in four general categories: research, professional, edu-
cational, and commercial. Research genres are those used by researchers to communicate
their findings and arguments: original articles, case reports, doctoral theses, and so forth.
Professional genres comprise those used by health professionals in their everyday work:
clinical guidelines, summaries of product characteristics, disease classifications, nomencla-
tures, vade mecums, and all the documents contained in clinical histories, among others.
Educational genres are used to teach and learn in a variety of contexts, from university
courses to domestic situations: course books, fact sheets for patients, patient information
leaflets, popularizing articles, and so on. And finally, commercial genres, used in selling
and buying products or services of all kinds in the medical and health-care sectors: drug
advertisements, catalogues of medical equipment, press releases for new drugs, and so
forth.

Medical Terminology

As far as understanding and translating specialized terms are concerned, knowledge of

organisation), and the Latin terms were subsequently borrowed into the modern European
languages.”
Nowadays the language of medicine is full of terms based on Greek and Latin forms.
They can refer to parts of the body, such as Greek kephalé (denoting the head, as in
“cephalagia”), or Latin mamma (denoting the breast, as in “mammography”); to substances,
such as Greek lipós (denoting fat, as in “lipidosis”) or Latin adeps (also denoting fat, as
in “adiposity”); to position in space and time, such as Greek epí (denoting upon, as in
“epidermis”) or Latin dexter (meaning right, as in “dextroduction”); to quantity, such as
Greek hypó (denoting deficiency or below the normal, as in “hypocalcemia”) or Latin super
(denoting excess or above normal, as in “superacidity”), to mention a few.
From the viewpoint of translation practice, there are two main tendencies in medical
terminology: one toward standardization, the other toward variation. On the one hand,
besides all Greek and Latin forms and terms, which are highly internationalized and vary
only in spelling between modern languages, standardization also refers to all types of
international classifications and nomenclatures, such as the International Classification of
Diseases or the Nonproprietary Names of Pharmaceutical Substances, both published and
promoted by the World Health Organization.
On the other hand, medical terminology is highly dynamic, constantly reflecting
discoveries and innovations through neologisms. From the English–Spanish context,
Navarro (2007, p. 3) states that “Each year thousands of medical neologisms are coined in
English, and they must be rapidly imported into Spanish with a maximum of precision,
clarity, rigor and accuracy.” New terms giving names to new realities such as immuno-
stain, drunkorexia, cyberchondria, or unpatient are frequent in medical texts and constitute
one of the most challenging and time-consuming aspects of medical translation.
Variation can also be seen in synonymy and, to a lesser degree, polysemy. One of the
commonest forms of synonymy in languages such as English are the doublets formed by
technical names and their popular equivalents, such as “cephalalgia” and “headache,” or
“hemorrhage” and “bleeding.” Such synonyms may be a source of translation problems
because languages are not symmetrical in their use: for example, what in Spanish is con-
sidered to be low register may be perfectly acceptable in English in the same text genre
(this is what Pilegaard calls “register mismatch,” 1997, p. 171).
Medical translators are the unseen, unsung but indispensable disseminators of medical
knowledge. The challenges they face are great but the benefits they bring to society and
humanity at large are immeasurable.

SEE ALSO: Health-Care, Medical, and Mental Health Interpreting; Scientific and Technical
Translation

References

Fischbach, H. (1993). Translation, the great pollinator of science: A brief flashback on medical
translation. In S. E. Wright & L. D. Wright (Eds.), Scientific and technical translation (pp. 89–100).
Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Halliday, M. A. K. (1998). Things and relations: Regrammatising experience as technical knowledge.
In J. R. Martin & R. Veel (Eds.), Reading science: Critical and functional perspectives on discourses
of science (pp. 185–235). London, England: Routledge.
López-Piñero, J. M. (2000). Breve historia de la medicina. Madrid, Spain: Alianza Editorial.
Montalt, V. (2005). Manual de traducció cientificotècnica. Vic, Spain: Eumo.
Montalt, V., & M. González (2007). Medical translation step by step. Learning by drafting. Manchester,
England: St. Jerome.
Navarro, F. (2007). Minidiccionario crítico de dudas. Pance@, 9(26), 108–15.
 medical translation 5

Pilegaard, M. (1997). Translation of medical research articles. In A. Trosborg (Ed.), Text typology
and translation. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Savage-Smith, E. (2001). Medieval Islam. Retrieved June 13, 2011 from http://www.nlm.nih.gov/
hmd/arabic/med_islam.html
Wakabayashi, J. (1996). Teaching medical translation. Meta, 41(3), 356–65.

Suggested Readings

Delisle, J., & Woodsworth, J. (1993). Translators through history. Amsterdam, Netherlands: John
Benjamins.
Fischbach, H. (Ed.). (1998). Translation and medicine. American translators association. Amsterdam,
Netherlands: John Benjamins.
Gutiérrez-Rodilla, B. M. (1998). La ciencia empieza en la palabra. Análisis e historia del lenguaje
científico. Barcelona, Spain: Península.
Montgomery, S. (2000). Science in translation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Vickery, B. (2000). Scientific communication in history. Lanham, MA: Scarecrow Press.