The demand for well qualified and experienced technical translators is continuing to grow and medical translation is one of the many types of technical translation services that may have appealed to you as a newly qualified and enthusiastic translator. But what sort of documents do medical translation service providers actually deal with?
Many medical translators have come from the medical field and this certainly helps them to recognise much of the terminology used in medical documents, although just like medicine itself, the field is so huge, it would be almost impossible for the general medical translator to be familiar with all aspects of medicine. However, the background certainly helps, as with any sort of specialised translation the ability to know where to look for words, phrases or terms that are unfamiliar is very important.
Take a translator who is used to website translation services or business translation services. If given a medical document to translate, they would be likely take twice as long to translate it, even if their familiarity with the language required is as good as any other translator. Most translators normally charge by the word, so taking twice as long to translate a document that is full of unfamiliar terminology means that you are likely to complete half the amount of translation in the same time as a translator who is familiar with medical terminology.
If you intend to specialise further, you may decide to concentrate on particular types of medical document. For instance, one field of medical document that is very common is that of clinical trials. Clinical trials are often prepared by specialists in a specific country and may be prepared in English (this is still the most common language for these documents). They are then given to medical translators to translate into many other languages. Documents of this type include clinical trial protocols, legal documents prepared by pharmaceutical companies, informed consent forms for those trialling the drugs, brochures and pamphlets and adverse event reports.
A different sort of document altogether and one requiring different levels of experience is the medical device document. In many ways, it is less the medical knowledge which is important here, but knowledge of engineering and physics as they apply to the instrument or device. Some knowledge of health and safety requirements and the terminology that is used in explaining these requirements is just as important.
These are simply two examples of a huge field which depends on good translators at some point. Patents, patient brochures and information sheets, medical websites, academic papers, market research and regulatory and compliance documents all need to be translated to varying degrees by medical translators who have taken the path to specialised medical document translation.
Many medical translators have come from the medical field and this certainly helps them to recognise much of the terminology used in medical documents, although just like medicine itself, the field is so huge, it would be almost impossible for the general medical translator to be familiar with all aspects of medicine. However, the background certainly helps, as with any sort of specialised translation the ability to know where to look for words, phrases or terms that are unfamiliar is very important.
Take a translator who is used to website translation services or business translation services. If given a medical document to translate, they would be likely take twice as long to translate it, even if their familiarity with the language required is as good as any other translator. Most translators normally charge by the word, so taking twice as long to translate a document that is full of unfamiliar terminology means that you are likely to complete half the amount of translation in the same time as a translator who is familiar with medical terminology.
If you intend to specialise further, you may decide to concentrate on particular types of medical document. For instance, one field of medical document that is very common is that of clinical trials. Clinical trials are often prepared by specialists in a specific country and may be prepared in English (this is still the most common language for these documents). They are then given to medical translators to translate into many other languages. Documents of this type include clinical trial protocols, legal documents prepared by pharmaceutical companies, informed consent forms for those trialling the drugs, brochures and pamphlets and adverse event reports.
A different sort of document altogether and one requiring different levels of experience is the medical device document. In many ways, it is less the medical knowledge which is important here, but knowledge of engineering and physics as they apply to the instrument or device. Some knowledge of health and safety requirements and the terminology that is used in explaining these requirements is just as important.
These are simply two examples of a huge field which depends on good translators at some point. Patents, patient brochures and information sheets, medical websites, academic papers, market research and regulatory and compliance documents all need to be translated to varying degrees by medical translators who have taken the path to specialised medical document translation.
