| |
Medical Community In Dire Need Of Helping Immigrants Understand Doctors' Orders And Prescriptions
January 9, 2003 - The front page of the Wall Street Journal today as well as a story from Reuters Wire Service on Monday detailed the serious problem the medical community is facing in translating and interpreting what doctors order, prescribe and diagnose.
Liz Elting, President and CEO of TransPerfect Translations, one of the world's leading translation companies says, "Obviously, this is a very serious problem. I have seen terrible and even life-threatening mistakes. Take for example the English word 'once' on a prescription that indicates taking a drug once a day. In Spanish, 'once' means eleven."
Elting continues, "The problems come from the translators or interpreters the medical community uses. When translating, you must have an expert not only in the language but also in the subject matter, in this case the field of medicine. The translator has to do more than just translate words in a literal manner. We do work for some of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world translating booklets included with prescription medicines and, needless to say, the booklets must be perfect. The translators we use are thoroughly screened for their language knowledge, their medical knowledge, and their accuracy. You can't just use a bright language student or a doctor's assistant who may be bilingual - if you do, you are putting the patient at risk."
Eliting concludes, "There are other methods that hospitals and doctors can use, including seminars, a call-in service with an experienced medical translation company, and creating a glossary to give both staff members and patients a bilingual reference document for commonly used medical terminology."
About TransPerfect
TransPerfect Translations is one of the world's leading translation companies. With 19 offices on 3 continents, it provides a full range of language services in over 100 languages to multinational companies worldwide. TransPerfect Translations has a network of 4,000 linguists and subject-area specialists worldwide. The wide range of services it provides includes translation, interpreting, multilingual typesetting/graphic services, web site globalization, software localization, multimedia presentations, subtitling and voiceovers as well as multicultural marketing. TransPerfect specializes in pharmaceutical translations. Headquarters are in New York City.
|
|
