Poll: Do you think there is a need for new medical/health care translators?
Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
ProZ.com Staff
SITE STAFF
Oct 14

This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Do you think there is a need for new medical/health care translators?".

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Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida  Identity Verified
Portugal
Local time: 21:27
Member (2007)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
N/A Oct 14

I haven’t the faintest idea how many medical translators there are and what the need is. Anyway, lately most translation jobs are coming from China, India and Egypt…

neilmac
Elizabeth Joy Pitt de Morales
Yaotl Altan
Ana Vozone
expressisverbis
Philip Lees
 
Edith van der Have
Edith van der Have
Netherlands
Local time: 22:27
Member (2016)
English to Dutch
+ ...
I'm a medical translator ... Oct 14

... and haven't see any significantly increasing or decreasing need for my services so far. No idea about the medical translation field as a whole, though.

Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
ipv
Sebastian Witte
expressisverbis
Philip Lees
Rachel Waddington
 
Lieven Malaise
Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 22:27
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
No... Oct 14

...because the medical field is generally perfectly doable without being hyperspecialized (meaning having some degree in medicine or work experience in the medical field) and I don't think there's a shortage of translators (understatement). There might be a shortage of really good translators, but that's another matter.

Korana Lasić
Daryo
 
Cristina Paolino
Cristina Paolino  Identity Verified
Italy
Local time: 22:27
Member (2012)
German to Italian
+ ...
N/A Oct 14

It depends on the country

 
Ana Vozone
Ana Vozone  Identity Verified
Local time: 21:27
Member (2010)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
How can I know...? Oct 14

I do not work in the field, how can I possibly gauge the need for more translators?

 
Anton Konashenok
Anton Konashenok  Identity Verified
Czech Republic
Local time: 22:27
French to English
+ ...
Lieven, are you serious? Oct 14

Lieven Malaise wrote:

...because the medical field is generally perfectly doable without being hyperspecialized (meaning having some degree in medicine or work experience in the medical field) and I don't think there's a shortage of translators (understatement). There might be a shortage of really good translators, but that's another matter.


Are you serious or is that sarcasm? To the less experienced, translation in the medical field may indeed seem perfectly doable without any medical background, but in my decades-long experience, this is a huge fallacy. Medical texts (except the simplest ones like lab test reports) are full of pitfalls, discerning which requires the knowledge of medicine. I had to stop editing other people's translations because I could no longer bear the abundance of blunders, sometimes dangerous. Those who don't care for high quality can disregard what I said, though.


Becca Resnik
Maria Teresa Borges de Almeida
IrinaN
Philip Lees
Rachel Waddington
Michele Fauble
Kaspars Melkis
 
expressisverbis
expressisverbis
Portugal
Local time: 21:27
Member (2015)
English to Portuguese
+ ...
Other / I definitely don't know Oct 14

No, right now I think there's more of a need for doctors and health professionals to take care of us, translators, who are affected every day by MT, AI, Proz bugs, some clients who want quality for stupid rates, scammers who offer marvellous jobs and payments that are even more marvellous to be true, CAT tools that sometimes don't work when we want them most, and polls asking us things as if translators were fortune tellers and/or had a crystal ball... 😁
Now, on a more serious note: I d
... See more
No, right now I think there's more of a need for doctors and health professionals to take care of us, translators, who are affected every day by MT, AI, Proz bugs, some clients who want quality for stupid rates, scammers who offer marvellous jobs and payments that are even more marvellous to be true, CAT tools that sometimes don't work when we want them most, and polls asking us things as if translators were fortune tellers and/or had a crystal ball... 😁
Now, on a more serious note: I definitely don't know, but I've seen a few jobs posted here lately in this field.
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Elaine Ruby
 
Lieven Malaise
Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 22:27
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
. Oct 14

Anton Konashenok wrote:
Are you serious or is that sarcasm?


Let me rephrase: from all the medical texts that I have been offered (and accepted) to translate there wasn't 1 of which I felt it was above my head. Over more than 2 decades I've translated surgical implantation procedures, patient information about an array of diseases, clinical medication studies, documentation about several viruses, laboratory research procedures, laboratory equipment user manuals, and so on.

Perhaps there are more specialized texts that I'm not being offered for obvious reasons, but everything mentioned above was not exactly extremely challenging.


Korana Lasić
ADIE Translations
Evgeny Sidorenko
 
Mario Chávez
Mario Chávez
United States
Local time: 17:27
Member (Jun 2024)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Yes, in the USA Oct 14

Here in the United States there's a growing demand for Spanish medical/clinical interpreters and translators. A hospital in the state of Indiana is currently hiring an interpreter/translator. In-house positions are being actively advertised. Some health insurance companies are also seeking health care translators with experience in UX content generation.

Mind you, here they conflate medical with health care, so it pays to ask questions about the fields or specializatio
... See more
Here in the United States there's a growing demand for Spanish medical/clinical interpreters and translators. A hospital in the state of Indiana is currently hiring an interpreter/translator. In-house positions are being actively advertised. Some health insurance companies are also seeking health care translators with experience in UX content generation.

Mind you, here they conflate medical with health care, so it pays to ask questions about the fields or specializations.

The U.S. Social Security Administration is hiring a number of Spanish translators, but based on my own field intelligence, these are actually English translators whose job will involve working with medical reports, handwritten notes and such used in Social Security disability claims.
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Poll: Do you think there is a need for new medical/health care translators?






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