Translation is a profession that encompasses a wide range of specialized fields: literary, legal, economic, tourism-related, and many others. In today’s article, we will focus on medical translation.

Accuracy and precision in this field are of vital importance—more so than in many others—because errors in medical translation can lead to improperly performed surgical procedures, incorrect interpretation of medication dosages, misdiagnoses, and, in the worst cases, even endanger a patient’s life. For this reason, these types of assignments should only be entrusted to experienced professionals.

In fact, a 2010 study conducted at the Hospital for Children in Wilmington, Delaware, found that up to 50% of translated medical prescriptions contained translation errors.

This leads us to an important question: What are the most common errors in medical translation, and how should we address them?

Most Common Errors in Medical Translation

• Polysemy

Polysemy is an issue shared with other types of translation, but in medical texts it requires even greater attention. For example, the term cast has different meanings depending on the specialist using it: in orthopedics it means “plaster cast,” in prosthetics it refers to a “mold” or “mold impression,” and in ophthalmology it can refer to “strabismus.”

• Incorrect Use of Decimals

In English, decimal numbers use a period, while in Spanish they use a comma. As trivial as it may seem, this is one of the most common mistakes (especially with machine translation) and can have serious consequences by completely altering numerical values.

• Foreignisms

Foreignisms are words or expressions borrowed from another language. Although sometimes useful, they are often overused unnecessarily in Spanish, which already has sufficient terminology of its own.

Examples: “contraceptivo” instead of “anticonceptivo”, feedback instead of “retroalimentación”, handicap instead of “obstáculo”, rash instead of “exantema” or “erupción cutánea”, “randomizado” instead of “aleatorio”, among others.

• False Friends

ONCE ≠ ONCE

This error seems unthinkable because of how simple it is, but remember the 2010 study mentioned earlier, which found that up to 50% of translated medical prescriptions contained potentially life‑threatening mistakes. One of the most frequent was translating once as “once” (“eleven”) in Spanish. Imagine if your medication leaflet instructed you to take a drug eleven times a day instead of once.

INTOXICATED ≠ INTOXICADO

This example is so well‑known that it has been discussed in another entry on our blog.

In 1980, Willie Ramirez fell into a coma and was taken to a hospital in South Florida. Upon arrival, his family told the doctors in Spanish that Willie was intoxicado. The medical team interpreted this as the English term intoxicated, meaning drunk, while in Latin American Spanish intoxicado can refer to adverse effects from anything ingested.

The incorrect interpretation led to a misdiagnosis and delayed proper treatment, resulting in a brain hemorrhage that could have been prevented and ultimately left Willie quadriplegic for life. Since the hospital had been advised to hire a professional interpreter and failed to do so, it was ordered to pay 71 million U.S. dollars.

How Are the Most Common Problems in Medical Translation Identified?

According to Antich de León, the three basic principles a translation must follow are:

• Be faithful to the original text
• Do not add content
• Do not omit content

How should we address these issues when translating?

In addition to the errors mentioned above, three essential characteristics of medical language must be highlighted: truthfulness, clarity, and precision.

Truthfulness:

Medical and scientific texts must be truthful. What appears in the target text must accurately reflect what the author intended in the original. For example:

• A total of 46 cases have been reported since 1996, but WHO estimates that the actual figure is 10 times higher.
• Incorrect translation:: “Un total de 46 casos han sido reportados desde 1996, pero la OMS estima que la cifra actual* es 10 veces más alta”.

The issue lies in “actual figure”, which was mistranslated as “cifra actual”. “Actual” is a false friend: it means “real” in Spanish, not “current.”

Precision:

Imprecision often occurs when a polysemous term is used instead of a precise one that allows no ambiguity. For example:

• “El doctor Smith es uno de los mayores especialistas mundiales en la enfermedad del sueño*.”

*The problem is that “enfermedad del sueño” could refer to narcolepsy (a neurological disorder causing excessive daytime sleepiness) or to sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis transmitted by the tsetse fly). To avoid ambiguity, the translator should specify “narcolepsia” (narcolepsy) or “tripanosomosis” (trypanosomiasis), depending on the context.

Clarity:

One of the goals of scientific texts is to convey a clear and direct message. However, awkward syntactic constructions in the target language can confuse readers. For example:

• “Los médicos de atención primaria siguen recetando en nuestro medio asociaciones de fármacos contra las jaquecas prohibidas por el Ministerio de Sanidad.”

The Ministry of Health does not prohibit migraines; what is prohibited are certain drug combinations. The sentence must be restructured to avoid confusion.

Resources

Finally, here are some useful digital resources for tackling challenges in medical translation:

• http://vademecum.medicom.es/ Official website of Medicom, publisher of the Spanish vademecum. Useful for looking up drug names, compounds, ingredients, interactions, dosage, side effects, etc.
• http://www.portalfarma.com/ Website of the Spanish Pharmaceutical Association, which allows cross‑referenced searches.
• http://europa.eu.int/eurodicautom/Controller Multilingual online dictionary created by translators of the European Commission.

In conclusion, considering all the aspects discussed, we can answer our initial question about the most common errors in medical translation. Fortunately, the answer is simple: work with professional, experienced translators to avoid potentially serious consequences for patients’ health.