Medical Translation Insight

Guest article:
By Roomy Naqvy
Gujarati-English-Hindi translator
Contact him via proz.com and the ATA


In response to B.J. Epstein's post on why she doesn't take on medical translation assignments, I would like to post some of my own, very positive experiences in this field.

I started out as a literary translator, got published, got accolades, then translated lots of cuisine texts and then suddenly found myself translating medical texts. I never thought it was forbidding. I have translated a large number of medical texts for the last few years.

Once I was translating a numbered list from English into Gujarati, where the English read, "Have you had a history of the following: heart attack, cardiac arrest?" I had seven Gujarati dictionaries at my house, and still I was stumped. Gujarati dictionaries define both as "attack on the heart" but "cardiac arrest" is different. I struggled for an hour and then translated "cardiac arrest" as "the stoppage of the heart".

In other instances, sometimes, when I edit Hindi translations, many translators use the word for stomach while describing the abdomen, primarily because Indians tend to be a conservative culture, and they use "body" words infrequently.

I find these examples fascinating. To me, they represent a challenge which is similar to translating literary or cuisine texts and keep me enjoying medical translation work.