The translation is an important subject. It is required for every subject and field. The translation is also supposed to be of good quality. It has to be accurate and precise overall. Medical translation in particular needs to be accurate. Translation is a tool that connects businesses with customers and other people. One of the most important translation types relates to the pharmaceutical industry.
Pharmaceutical translation has become the need of the hour. Experimentation regarding drugs is a common affair and new drugs are released all over the world to facilitate the people who need these. A pharmaceutical product when leaves the production unit its final destination is difficult to trace without instruction in the target language. That tells how experienced translators should do the deed. The medical translation has to be super accurate and precise so that there is no negligence not even minor ones. This is a hectic job and hence comes with a lot of challenges and shortcomings. They can only overcome these when they have experienced and specialist people on the side who have a firm grasp of the pharmaceutical industry.
Multiple language groups in countries
A lot of countries have different languages spoken in the state. Though many other countries come with one or two official languages and expect the translation in the same languages as part of pharmaceutical translation services. However, when these drugs go to U.S. or Britain it is not all about providing this information in the English language. They would need the same information in the other languages too which people of those regions speak commonly. Doctors and healthcare staff have to take care of the patients as they often go through rough patches most of the time so they won’t want any complications in understanding the content while doing a diagnosis or prescribing the medicines and offering the treatment. Therefore, the translation of the pharmaceutical products should be intact with the original products in every language that they speak popularly.
Medical terms and jargon
This has emerged as the biggest challenge of the medical translation and translation of documents such as user manuals or professional translation of informed consent forms. Medical jargon is there in everything. Medicine is a specialized field and hence requires people who have the relevant expertise. Translators no matter how experienced they are if not good at the medical text and don’t understand the field or have its knowledge can barely understand and comprehend the medical terms. The translation could be about something such as a disease, medical condition, or drug. An experienced translator can use his judgments and knowledge and can decide about things however, someone who barely understands the terms cannot put his effort and if he does we are not sure if it is relevant and accurate.
The medical language is tough and extensive and it gets challenging at times even for the experienced translator to take care of the medical language and abbreviation.
Translating drug names
This is another shortcoming of medical and psychology translation. Other than the translation of diseases the translators have to struggle with the translation of medicine and drug names too. All the brands and drugs can have specific given names which help people to identify these in the country where these are being sold. It is the World health organization that regulates international public health and it assigns a number of pharmaceutical products to the international and nonproprietary name (INN). Usually, they give a generic name to the drug that is based on the active ingredient. Ventolin, for instance, is the name of a prescription drug that helps asthma patients. The INN for this drug is ‘Salbutamol’.
They compile the medicines and drugs in the United States and they also name them with the United States’ adopted name. For Ventolin this is ‘albuterol’. Translation of this type of medicine is required to write prescriptions however, knowing the target audience of the prescription is extremely significant.
Cultural context
The cultural context has a great impact on medical and psychology translation services. This gets challenging for the translators to take care of the cultural factors while translating the medical content. Also when it has been proved time and again that certain medical terms can have different meanings in different countries. Overlooking this factor complicates things and the words can be misconstrued.
There are a lot of examples where they use different words for different meanings in American and British English. The word ‘surgery’ refers to a procedure that a doctor performs on a patient in the USA. However, ‘surgery’ in British English talks about the office hours of a physician.
There the translators and translation vendors have to be conscious while presenting translation services for the pharmaceutical industry. Translators should also be aware of the false friends in medical translation. False friends refer to words that sound the same in different languages but have different meanings.
Final words
Medical translation is a tough field. Translating healthcare and pharmaceutical content can come with a lot of challenges. Although such tasks should always be assigned to experienced translators even the experienced ones have to struggle with certain shortcomings. The translation of drug names, being unable to deliver the translation in all required languages, and keeping up with the cultural context are some of the main shortcomings of pharmaceutical translation.