26 Jun Common mistakes for medical translators

Posted by - Rubén

Medical translation is a difficult job and medical translators are required to pay careful attention to details. Making mistakes can be easier than you may ever imagined and that is what make the difference between good and bad medical translators. So here is a list including some of the most common mistakes that medical translators usually make. Being able to identify them will also improve the quality of your translations.

Mistakes to be avoided by medical translators

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False friends

False friends are very tricky and are one of the main responsible for translations with a very different meaning. Good medical translators always pay careful attention and are suspicious of any word that they may find in the original text. You should always wonder if your translation makes a whole sense or not, if the answer is not you may did a misunderstanding.

Abbreviations

Many medical translators always wonder about the meaning of different abbreviations. A simple wrong abbreviation could change the whole meaning of a text. To avoid such issue, there are some online resources for medical translators as Cosnautas or MediLexicon for finding the right one. You must also learn as much as you can about the abbreviation you are intended to translate for assuring the good election.

Poorly training

Medical translators with a poorly training are responsible of many bad translations. A better background and experience would undoubtedly help solve this issue. Masters, symposiums, lectures, readings and self-teaching can be very useful. Knowledge does not take up any space, but no knowledge could be terrible.

Figures and measure converter

As a medical translator, you should note that figures may change from a language and culture to another. For example, decimals are expressed in English by a point but in French by a comma. Additionally metric systems also change from different cultures; British or Americans uses inches and pints, but most of the countries all over the globe prefer centimetres and litters. Can you image how catastrophic would be for medicine a misunderstanding of such measures? Drugs would mean death.