What is Medical Translation?
Medical is the total disciplines that are practised basically to understand, protect and improve human health. Medical translation, as it suggests, is a concept that is used to transfer medical texts to another language. Medicine is defined as the health sciences. Today, medical translation is one of the most preferable translation types, and translation offices are trying to satisfy their customers by offering various services in the field of medical translation.
Today, pharmaceutical companies, hospitals or medical companies prefer the method of medical translation to transfer many documents into different languages. As medical translation involves a sensitive issue like health, the text to be translated should be read and handled carefully and the technical details should not be excluded. Therefore, it can be conveniently expressed that medical translation is of great significance that requires experience and specific competencies. In this regard, we can underline that the translation offices that render medical translation services should provide quality and professionality. So, what does a medical translation service inclose? Which documents are translated under the medical translation? Let’s review these together.
The Scope of A Medical Translation
The following documents are translated under the medical translation;
- Medical documents, medical reports and researches (on drugs, treatment methods and diseases),
- Such documents include gynaecology, pediatric, medical, internal medicine, orthopaedics, anaesthesia, patient papers, toxicology, biostatistics, endoscopy, pharmacology, clinical reports, endocrinology, prescriptions, cardiovascular diseases, pulmonology, surgery, cardiology, ophthalmology, microbiology, traumatology, orthopaedics, pathology, and documents such as medical science and prescribing information and reports, researches and articles.
- The patents of medical devices and equipment, reports on medical sciences of dentistry, doctor’s reports and documents requiring speciality on these topics,
- Patient information, specialist reports, clinical trials, biochemical research,
- Researches in pharmacology and medicine, thesis, articles, drug registries, medical product licenses, patents, promotional brochures and texts of medical and pharmaceutical institutions,
- Promotional brochures for herbal and organic products and publications and magazines related to the pharmaceutical and medical industries.
Qualifications for A Medical Translators
Medical translators should have specific competencies and expertise. It is possible to explain these competencies as follows.
- The medical translator must have a large vocabulary and extensive terminology on the health field. Otherwise, a different word may be used instead of a term.
- The medical translators should have expertise and experience in the medical field.
- The medical translators must have an excellent command of medical concepts.
- The medical translators should also eliminate ambiguity.
- The medical translators must use a passive structure when translating.
- Medical translations have unique techniques and forms. Medical translators must dominate these techniques and forms accordingly.