A Brief Discussion on Medical Translation
October 16, 2020
As the COVID-19 pandemic sweeps through the world and scientists from all over the world race to discover effective vaccines, the developments in life sciences and healthcare are receiving a lot of attention. Our professional team is equipped to tackle life science and medicine projects, many of which have recently been addressing the impact of the pandemic. Translation in relation to medicine is expected to be prevalent in the foreseeable future.
Medical translation is highly professional, requiring knowledge in medicine and related jargon. Translators engaging in medical translation are thus generally specialised in the field, and certain senior editors even possess background in the education or practice of medicine. Medical translation can also be further divided into various fields, each of which has its own jargons or terminology that translators often spend extra time to look up relevant medical dictionaries. Take the COVID-19 pandemic as an example, a translator working on a COVID-19 research report might have to dig into medical thesaurus of infectious disease and microbiology.
Documents in medical translation come in a remarkable variety, generally including medical literature, R&D files, applications for marketing of new drugs, pharmaceutical and distribution reports, drug ingredients and instructions for use. Medical translation demands a high degree of precision, tolerating no error in every terminology. Therefore, translators would often review professional references and import glossary term bases into CAT tools before processing the translation task.
The COVID-19 is leaving a profound impact on our economy and the language service industry is no exception. As medicine and biotech gain traction, we see growth potential in relevant translation projects. Our language experts, as always, will continue to conscientiously uphold a high quality standard in anticipation of the increasingly robust demand for translation.
