Poll: Do you think there is a need for new medical/health care translators? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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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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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…
| | | | | 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.
| | | | Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 22:27
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
...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.
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It depends on the country
| | | | Ana Vozone 
Local time: 21:27
Member (2010)
English to Portuguese
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| How can I know...? | Oct 14 |
I do not work in the field, how can I possibly gauge the need for more translators?
| | | | | 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.
| | | | 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. ▲ Collapse
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Lieven Malaise
Belgium
Local time: 22:27
Member (2020)
French to Dutch
+ ...
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.
| | | | Mario Chávez
United States
Local time: 17:27
Member (Jun 2024)
English to Spanish
+ ...
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. ▲ Collapse
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