E-ging Solutions is a world-leading Shanghai translation company with specialties in Medical translation.
Medical translation is a highly diverse and complex market: a bigger market than you might think. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be 83,000 jobs for interpreters and translators by 2020 with a 42% growth in demand for translators within a decade. As globalization and international communication become the norm in all industries, professional and specialized language services become more important than ever before.
In no field is quality and accuracy more important than in medical translation. Your choice of a medical translation service has very real implications for your business. Knowing the facts will help you select the best medical translator. Don’t fall for the following myths:
Myth: Any bilingual person can be a translator. Not everyone who can write competently in English is a professional writer. Likewise, the ability to write in two languages does not make a person a professional translator. Perfectly fluent users of a language frequently fail professional translator exams. The best certified medical translators are highly educated, with advanced training in translation and their specialty field. Their ability to transport meaning from a source document to a target document with consistency and precision distinguishes them from other bilingual people.
Myth: Interpreting and translating are essentially the same thing. Despite widespread misconceptions, translators and interpreters perform very different tasks and have very different skill sets. Translation refers to written language, while interpreting refers to spoken language.
Translators must have great writing skills and training in translation, but they must also be adept at using translation tools and terminology databases specific to their trade. Interpreters, on the other hand, use highly developed short-term retention and typically rely on note-taking and memorized specialized terminology for instant recall.
Being an excellent speaker in one’s own language does not necessarily mean one is an excellent writer. The same truth applies to work in other languages.
Myth: Perfect translation really only matters to language snobs. Well-written material is more effective for all audiences regardless of the topic or the language. A recent study found that the Fortune 500 companies with the largest translation budgets were 150% more likely to report revenue increases than their counterparts.
Another report on translation in Africa found that greater access to translated information improves not only political inclusion and human rights, but that it also directly results in better utilization of health care and even saves lives in some of the world’s poorest countries.
Myth: Machine translation is eliminating the need for human translation. This myth is seductive. It’s also completely false. Machine translation is actually expanding the demand for human translation. The most familiar machine translation, the kind typically available for free online, brings basic translation to the average person, generating awareness of different languages and the problems inherent in translating from one language to another.
Even the best machine translation applications are far from perfect and still cannot render texts that accurately convey the nuances of real human language. Only humans (so far) can do that. And as with any technology, qualified humans are required to use machine translation sensibly. Rarely does any technology eliminate an industry. Instead, technological advances help industries to evolve. Translation is such a field, especially medical translation with its complex terms and often difficult subject matter.
Don’t believe the myths: Those were just a few of the myths that surround the work of professional translators. There are many others. Accurate, effective, medical translation is the product of highly specialized, trained professionals — and it is something for which there is no substitute.
