Know about Difficulties Faced in Medical Translation

Medical translation is the translation of the technical, regulatory, clinical or marketing documentation related to the pharmaceutical or medical or health care fields. It facilitates proper care and treatment for the patients who speak other languages. Medical translation must be done by a professional because any kind of wrong translation can have grave consequences. Medical translation requires specific training and subject matter knowledge in order to translate medical content besides the linguistic skills.

Following are the difficulties faced in medical translation:

• One of the main difficulties faced by a medical translator is there are many abbreviations and acronyms used in the medical field.
• Other difficulty faced by the medical translators is that the names of the diseases and the scientific name of the prescribed drug by the doctor for curing the diseases have the names which are long and unwieldy, effecting the communication. For instance electroencephalogram (EEG), electrocardiogram (ECG).
• There are multiple meanings for the same abbreviation or acronym, so the medical translator depending on the context has to choose the right meaning.
• Medical personnel say that when the individual is translating the messages of patient’s child or an adult relative or friend, the message usually gets lost in the translation due to interpreter’s lack of knowledge of medical terms, concepts, terminology and the technology.
• In medical translation the source language must be translated in to target language word to word and phrase to phrase.

The above are the various difficulties faced by medical interpreter.