Translating Health Care Documents to Spanish

A Guide to Translating Health Care Materials into Spanish – Second Part

Posted On February 10, 2017By TranspanishIn Latinos, Spanish Translation, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

In our last article, we discussed the benefits of translating health care materials into Spanish, and looked at some of the steps involved in the process. Once the decision has been made to translate the materials, the next step is to find a qualified translator. Here, we offer you a guide to recruiting qualified medical translators and to ensuring that the finished product is useable and fit for purpose.

Recruiting a qualified medical translator

Recruiting a qualified medical translator entails much more than finding someone who is bilingual. Although this is one of the necessary qualifications, a translator employed to translate health care materials must also possess considerable expertise and experience in the subject matter to be able to understand the source text.

A key decision is whether to employ a freelance medical translator or a translation agency. Although freelancers can be seen as a less expensive option, translation agencies offer a more comprehensive service, providing a whole team that will see a translation project through from start to finish. A project manager heads a team of translators and proofreaders, meaning that you save valuable time, which in effect saves you money.

Negotiating terms

After finding a qualified medical translator, terms need to be negotiated in regards to fees, completion dates and payment terms.

Spanish translators can charge in different ways, generally per word or per page. However, if the project is for a specific format, such as a pamphlet created in InDesign, translators may also quote a DTP fee. Where specialized knowledge and experienced is called for, higher costs should be expected.

Negotiations should be clear from the outset and should include that the translator will commit to staying with the project until completion. This should include proofreading and final revisions.

A further advantage of using a translation agency is that they usually offer discounts for large projects or for nonprofit organizations.

Development Phase

Throughout the development stage of a health care translation, close contact should be maintained between all parties, so that the translator can ask for clarification when needed. If the translation is a long-term project, possible reviews and updates should be specified in the quote.

Revisions

The revision stage can either be carried out by the translation agency, which will use other qualified medical translators within its team to review the document, or it can be carried out by the client. However, if you were to undertake the review process yourself, it is paramount that the reviewer is a Spanish native speaker and ideally has extensive experience in both translation and the medical topic in hand. Grammatical construction and usage, spelling and use of expressions should all be taken in consideration.

Final proofreading

If the translator or translation agency is not in charge of the Desktop Publishing task, the translator should be available to do a final proofreading of the text once it has been integrated into its final design format.

Although producing and translating health care materials into Spanish can be an investment in terms of both time and money, it is becoming an essential process in a country like the US which has a large Hispanic population. The benefits of the investment far outweigh the risks to patient health and the careers of health care providers.

Calendar of Translation Events – February 2017

Posted On January 30, 2017By TranspanishIn Tips for Translators/ No Comments

4
WordstoDeeds. Words to Deeds 2017. Legal Translation to the Next Level. London, UK.

American Translators Association (ATA). Free ATA Continuing Education Webinar.
Spreading Your Wings: Transitioning from Classroom to Career

Wordsmith Communication. Wordcon 2017. Calcutta, India.

13-15

Israel Translators Association (ITA). ITA 2017 Conference. Tel Aviv, Israel.

16-17

Joint National Committee for Languages (JNCLS). National Council for Languages & International Studies (NCLIS). 2017 Language Advocacy Day & Delegate Assembly. Washington, DC, USA.

23-24
Together 2017. Berlin, Germany.

24-25
University of Bremen. 6th Bremen Symposium. Bremen, Germany.

El Paso Translators & Interpreters Association (EPITA). Jorge Dieppa Continuing Education Seminar. El Paso, TX, USA.

27-March 3

UBM Tech Game Network. Game Developers Conference. San Francisco, California, USA.

28-March 3

Localization World, Ltd. LocWorld Shenzhen. Shenzhen, China.

A Guide to Translating Health Care Materials into Spanish – First Part

Posted On January 26, 2017By TranspanishIn Spanish Translation, Translation Buyers, Translations/ 1 Comment

Consider for a moment what it would be like if you broke your arm on holiday in Mexico. One minute you’re enjoying soaking up the sun in your resort, the next you slip on your way to the pool, and you’re on your way to hospital not understanding a word anyone says around you. From start to finish you don’t understand questions that are asked of you, never mind being able to answer them, and you realize that this communication barrier puts you at risk.

The situation is no better for the health care professionals at the hospital. As a doctor or nurse, treating patients you cannot communicate with is far from ideal. On the one hand, they are injured or sick and require treatment, but on the other hand medical treatment requires understanding and consent; proceeding without this is a risk to the patient and to the doctor´s reputation and career.

This exact situation is why producing and translating materials into different languages is an essential part of health care.

Why provide health care documents in Spanish?

Spanish is the second language of the US and 900,000 Hispanics live in North Carolina alone, which is nearly 10% of the state’s population. There is a considerable part of this population that has limited or even no English. Providing health care and medical documents in Spanish aids communication, but these translations need to be accurate and appropriate in order to achieve the following goals:

to ensure understanding of diagnosis, treatment and medication schedules, as well as any other educational or informative materials.
to eliminate the risk of patients unnecessarily attending services such as the emergency room. For example, a patient with sunstroke may just need rehydrating, but if the source of the problem cannot be communicated, the patient will end up taking up emergency resources.
patients will retain medical printed materials if the translation is of a high standard. Badly translated materials or materials in unknown languages are quickly discarded.
to protect medical professionals from legal proceedings as a result of miscommunication due to lack of professionally translated information.
to eliminate time being wasted trying to communicate in unknown languages.

Remember: Poorly translated medical and health care materials are as much of a risk as having no translated materials at all. Only accurate, professional Spanish translations will help communication with Hispanic populations.

Recommended steps for health care translations

There are certain recommended steps that should be taken when planning health care translations.

Preliminary planning

Spend some time investigating whether the information you want to translate into Spanish already exists in your organization. If translated materials are already available, consider how you will evaluate them. The level of accuracy will need to be checked thoroughly as mistranslated information makes the purpose of a translation null and void. The reading level will need to be assessed to ensure it is of the correct level for the target audience, in certain situations a simplified text will be more appropriate.

Evaluating existing Spanish materials

When there is a sudden need for health care materials in Spanish, medical settings may use existing translations without evaluating them first. However, the evaluation step is crucial to ascertain if the material is accurate, appropriate and therefore usable.

This evaluation can be carried out by a Spanish speaker within your organization, or you will need to employ the services of a Spanish-speaking proofreader or editor who will be able to compare the content to the English version and check the quality and accuracy of the translation.

Other points that should be thoroughly checked include whether the text is culturally appropriate, whether it targets its audience in the appropriate way and finally whether it reflects your health care setting’s recommendations and provides up-to-date information.

Remember: Ordering pre-existing bilingual materials from a catalog or agency is no guarantee of quality and very few medical organizations have their own evaluation procedure.

How to present Spanish translated materials

Another important step when considering translating medical materials into Spanish is how they will be presented. There are various options to choose from:

having two separate versions: one in English, one in Spanish.
having one document with both languages. For one-page documents the English could be on one side and the Spanish on the other. For longer documents the translations could be separated into different sections, or the Spanish could be set in a block next to the English text.
including the Spanish under each line of English. However, this method tends to be used more for forms, as it looks untidy and can be hard to follow in extended pieces of texts.

In our next post, we will discuss how to recruit qualified translators, negotiate terms, the development phase and how to review and proofread translated materials.

Translating Brochures into Spanish: Best Practices

Posted On December 21, 2016By TranspanishIn Spanish Translation, Translation Buyers/ No Comments

In the age of websites, questions are raised over whether translating brochures into Spanish, and indeed other languages, is still necessary.

Here, we explain why it is still an essential part of marketing and look at the best practices of this type of translation.

The need for brochure translation

However well-designed, effective and multilingual a company website is, the need for brochure translation as a marketing and sales tool remains.

Well-designed and well-written brochures give an impression of the wealth and success of a company, building client confidence. Without one, there is a time delay between referring a client to your website and the client actually looking. This allows for the risk factor of the client not taking the time to actually do so, or being attracted by the competition. Handing over a marketing material in paper form or emailing it directly into an inbox means potential clients have something concrete to refer to without trawling a website.

Paper form is particular beneficial for those who process better on paper, who need to feel something, be able to handle it, flick back and forth. Staring at a screen simply doesn’t allow information to be processed in the same way. This type of person will likely write on a paper brochure, underline, highlight and basically ‘think on paper’.

Spanish brochure translation

Spanish brochure translation is particularly beneficial, given the status of the language both in the US and worldwide. One of the six official languages of the US, 17.6% of the population declares Spanish as their first language. With over 472 million native speakers throughout 21 countries worldwide, Spanish is currently the second most spoken language in the world. Producing unilingual sales tools will limit reach dramatically.

What to consider when translating a brochure into Spanish

Factors to consider with Spanish brochure translation include:

Are you targeting a specific Spanish speaking audience or should neutral Spanish be used?
In order to obtain an accurate quote, most translation agencies request to review the document. Unless the brochure was created with MS Word, a PDF version rather than the source file is usually preferred. If sending the entire file is not possible, a sizeable sample and the total word count will help the translation provider prepare the quote. Other information such as deadlines will also be necessary.
Decide who will be doing the desktop publishing. A brochure is usually created with a DTP program such as Adobe InDesign and if you want it with same format as the source document, you will need to pay for the agency to carry out the DTP task and the source file will be needed for the translator. Even if it is done with MS Word, the format can still be complex, so ensure to confirm with the translation agency if the format is included in the final price. The other alternative is to send the file in Word format and assign the DTP task to a qualified member within your team.
The translation should always be proofread. This can either be done by someone in your company, or the translation agency can assign a second translator do this. Also, consider asking the agency to review the final version once it is print-ready, if you are doing the DTP yourself.
Consideration needs to be given to the design. A translation from English into Spanish will have 15-30 percent more text, potentially creating the need for a different layout. Features such as syllable separation, inverted exclamation and question marks, accents and the use of different characters such as ñ and ü all need to be considered.

Deciding to translate a brochure into Spanish means that you will be increasing the number of people reached, and in turn this will increase business for your company. Choosing the right translation agency and taking into consideration the above points will help you produce a professional Spanish brochure.

Do you need to translate a brochure? Contact Transpanish for a free quote!

When choosing a translation agency is the right choice

Posted On December 1, 2016By TranspanishIn Translation Buyers, Translations/ 1 Comment

The translation agency versus freelance translator decision is an important one for any company that is in need of translation work. As money is a key issue for any business, some companies automatically lean towards a freelancer, thinking they will be the less expensive choice, but is that always the right choice?

Advantages of translation agencies vs. freelance translators

Although at first glance, a translation agency may be a little more expensive, in the long run many companies find that it is far more time and cost effective to go through agencies than deal with a private freelancer.

Project team

One of the main advantages of a translation company is the fact that they have a team of translators, overseen by a project manager. This means that the correct translator for your specialized area will be chosen, ensuring high quality of work. Freelance translators generally only have one or two specialties.

In addition, a team means that there is always somebody to cover the work if a translator falls ill or becomes unavailable at the last minute. Choosing a freelancer means that there is a high risk of delay if anything unexpected arises.

Timeframes

In the event that you have a very large translation project, multiple translators will be assigned, meaning that the work can be turned around in a very short timeframe. The project manager will deal with all communications between the team, saving you time and making the whole project much more time efficient.

Proofreading and quality verification

Proofreading your own work is almost an impossible task, as however dedicated a freelancer is, it is very difficult to spot every typo or grammar error when you have written the text yourself. Most translation agencies provide a proofreading and quality verification service, meaning that translations are checked by a second translator, and when multiple translators are used for high volume projects, the work will be standardized to ensure consistency. Remember to check with the translation agency if revisions are made by a different translator than the one that translated the text

Other advantages

Other advantages of using a translation agency over a freelance translator are that there are generally more payment options available with agencies such as credit cards, and they are also more likely to have more advanced translation technologies that remain unaffordable for many freelancers.

Time is money

The reason we say that it can be more cost effective to go through an agency is that, quite simply, time is money. How much is you time worth? If you are spending time communicating with multiple freelancers, proofreading work and essentially project managing the translation project yourself, how much is that actually costing your company? Your time could be spent elsewhere. The difference in cost between an agency and a freelancer is often surprisingly negligible, especially when you take into consideration the above points.

The Schwa: A Native Speaker Feature

Posted On November 15, 2016By TranspanishIn English Language, Languages, Tips for Translators/ No Comments

The schwa sound is a revelation that comes to learners of English as they progress to higher levels. Considered as a ‘native speaker feature’, it helps both pronunciation and understanding by changing the stress of words and sentence.

Often referred to as a reduced, weak or unstressed sound, the schwa doesn’t involve the lips or tongue, and is merely the noise emitted when we engage the vocal cords. However, it is an essential concept to grasp for any learner of English as a foreign language.

The Schwa and Stress

Being a stress-timed language, English relies on the schwa sound to avoid sounding robotic with overuse of stress, or sounding monotone through under use of stress. To achieve anything like native level speaking skills, the use of the schwa is essential.

When it comes to words being stressed or unstressed, generally speaking, words in English can be divided up into two groups:

Stressed: nouns, main verbs, adjectives and adverbs. These communicate the main message of the sentence and are therefore stressed.

Unstressed: auxiliary verbs, pronouns, articles, linkers and prepositions. These are often referred to as grammar words and are, in general, unstressed.

“We are Going to the Shops?”: Looking at the example sentence of “we are going to the shops”, the words marked in bold are the ones that would use the schwa sound, being an auxiliary verb, a preposition and an article respectively. The other words are the ones that are necessary to communicate the main message. Essentially, they could stand alone and the message would still get across: “we going shops”. Many elementary learners of English would use this exact structure, as would young children learning to speak their mother tongue. However, grammatically this is incorrect.

Pronunciation, Understanding and Production

As already stated, grasping the use of the schwa will not only work towards achieving more native-like speech skills, but will also improve understanding. In turn, having more advanced understanding skills will lead to more accurate production.

Before understanding the use of the schwa, learners of English often just don’t hear it in sentences, and therefore reproduce those sentences incorrectly, as in the example given above. Other examples could be:

What are you talking about? – What you talking about?
They are arriving tomorrow – They arriving tomorrow
Come to my house – Come my house
I like the black one – I like the black one

The top two examples omit the auxiliary verb, the third drops the preposition and the fourth misses out the article.

More to Explore

There is a lot more to explore about the schwa, such as it being used for clusters of letters and also for stressed and unstressed syllables, but as a first insight the general concept of its use with stress in a sentence is key. Another angle of the schwa to look at would be its use in different accents as some use stress in different ways.

Is Being Bilingual Enough?

Posted On November 3, 2016By TranspanishIn Tips for Translators, Translations/ 1 No Comments

Parents of different nationalities who are raising their children to be bilingual are often met with comments that their children will grow up to be translators. This begs the question though of whether being bilingual is enough.

Whilst a child may grow up to be able to speak two languages, if they have been immersed mainly in only one culture, they will not necessarily be bicultural.

Here lies the question: does a translator need to be bicultural as well as bilingual?

Bilingual vs. Bicultural

Looking at The Oxford Dictionary for the definitions of bilingual and bicultural, we find the following:

Bilingual: Speaking two languages fluently

Bicultural: Having or combining the cultural attitudes and customs of two nations, peoples, or ethnic groups

Bilingual

Being bicultural is a lot more involved than being bilingual. Many people can become bilingual: university graduates, people who use a second language in their job, children of parents with different nationalities, and basically anyone who is willing to put in the hard work it takes to be able to use more than one language proficiently.

Bicultural

Becoming bicultural is not as straightforward as, generally speaking, it means somebody has to have lived within a certain community, experienced everyday life, eaten with them, taken part in traditional celebrations. Basically, they need to have lived and breathed the culture in the same way they have their native culture.

Why is Being Bicultural Important as a Translator?

Turning to the Oxford dictionary again, the definition of translation is ‘the process of translating words or text from one language into another’. Surely being bilingual should be enough if we take this definition literally, so why is it important for a translator to be bicultural too?

In reality, a translator needs to understand so much more than just the words and grammar of a language to be able to produce a true and accurate translation. Being bicultural as well as bilingual means that amongst many other aspects, the nuances, allusions and idiomaticity of a language and culture are understood; basically the information that a dictionary cannot always convey. Without this, a translation risks being stilted and awkward.

Bilingual is a Gateway to Bicultural

It is believed by some that being bilingual is a gateway to being bicultural. A person can be bilingual without being bicultural, but it would be very hard to be bicultural without being bilingual. Without language, it would be very difficult to enter into a community with enough depth to gain sufficient understanding and knowledge and meaning to be counted as bicultural.

Questions to ask clients during the translation process

Posted On October 12, 2016By TranspanishIn Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ 1 Comment

Translation projects are important and a part of the overall creation of useful content for companies. There are many problems though that may surface during such a project. One of the most important issue faced by a translator is the right understanding of specific terms. Many translators believe that it may be unprofessional to ask for clarification as this could show lack of knowledge, but, on the contrary, asking the right questions and in the right way during a translation project will show that you are going out of your way to deliver an accurate translation.

Questions before the Project

All translation projects should be preceded by obtaining some basic information which will allow you to understand the right context. The first question to ask is: who is the target audience? You should also find out if the client can provide some reference material such as glossaries or any previous translation they have done of similar content. Another key aspect is the tone of the translation because some languages such as Spanish have distinct informal and formal tones.

Questions during the Project

Clients often need to translate documents which are specific to their industry and it is difficult to understand a term or acronym which is used internally in a company. However, make sure to only include questions which you have not been able to search out satisfactory answers for. You should always refer to dictionaries, forums and do a research in the web before contacting a client.

Don´t rush and email your client if you come up with a question in the first page of a text. A good rule of thumb is to read the whole document first or check if the term in question appears more times in the document so that you have more context to understand it.

It is very common to come up with typos in the source document and you should always query your customer if you think there is an error which could change the meaning of a sentence. You will definitely score some points with your client if you identify these type of errors which are usually overlooked.

If you have too many questions which do not prevent you from continuing translating, a good option is to insert the questions as comments, your client can have a look at them once the translation is finished and answer you back inserting comments as well.

The right questions will not bring your value down, rather raise your prestige as a translator who values his clients and aims to deliver a professional translation, turning a one-time customer into a return customer.

Calendar of translation events – August 2016

Posted On September 23, 2016By TranspanishIn Tips for Translators/ No Comments

5-7

Translation Technology Summer School. Brasília, DF, Brazil.

4-6

Website Translation and Localization Course. Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
online/ Monterey, California, USA.

7-12

54th Annual Meeting of the association for Computational Linguistics (ACL2016). Berlin, Germany.

9-12

Computer-Assisted Translation Course. Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey.
Monterey, California, USA.

11-12

ACL 2016 Conference on Machine Translation. Association for Computational Linguistics. Berlin, Germany.

17-18

Second International Conference on Economic, Business, Financial and Institutional Translation. Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières. Trois-Rivières, Québec, Canada.

22-26

19th International Conference on English Historical Linguistics. Essen, Germany.

22- Sep 2

CETRA 2016. Centre for Translation Studies. Antwerp, Belgium.

American Translators Association (ATA). ATA Continuing Education Webinar. Getting Personal About Pricing
ATA Approved: 1 CE point

29-Sep 1

VIIIe Colloque International “Linguistique contrastive germano-romane et intraromane”. Innsbruck, Austria.

29-Sep 2

Translation Technology Summer School. University of Leuven. Antwerp, Belgium

Top trends in the translation industry

Posted On September 23, 2016By TranspanishIn Tips for Translators, Translation Buyers/ 3 Comments

Looking back last year, 2015 was undoubtedly a period of prosperity for the translation industry and if facts are to be believed, the amount of business in this sector has recorded a growth of around 6.5 percent this year.

In recent years, demand for translation industries has seen an upward trend. This is mainly due to the tremendous communication needs of the 21st century that has led governments and organizations to seek help in breaking the language barrier. Therefore, without ambiguity, the translation industry is one of the fastest growing in the world.

So, without further ado—let’s explore the 4 principal trends making waves this year!

Trend #1: An increasing demand for language translations

Despite of what you may think, “minor” languages spoken around the world are not fading away. As a matter of fact, demand for multilingual online content is going through an upward trend with English dominating the translation industry at 53.6 percent, while Russian, Chinese, Spanish and French are aggressively following.

By now you know what it means—it means more expansion opportunities for businesses, and to reach out to the international market, the demand for translators will keep on flourishing.

Trend #2: It’s time for quality OVER cost

Since businesses are always looking for ways to expand and increase market share, they are bound to search for exceptional translation service providers to benefit them with high quality service rather than opting for cheap low cost providers. In the translation market, it is imperative to constitute your credentials and portray your organizations image positively in the global market so as to be able to leverage status and negotiate power.

Trend #3: Voice based translation will be in more demand

Today, companies are looking for more novel ways to market their business in the global market. Gone are the days when simple plain text was translated to capture a new language market. From where we look, both audio and video translation service can excitedly change the way translation companies work.

Hence, to keep up with the ever-increasing demand, translation agencies should hire translators or train existing ones to provide with acceptable voice over translation service.

Trend #4: Human translation will still be superior over machine translation

Machine translation basically refers to instruments such as Bing translator, Google translator, etc. doing the job for you. While these smart tools are rising slowly, it is not recommended to use them often, unless it’s for personal use.

Currently, online tools cannot comprehend the context of your content, for example, your content can be used for marketing, as white paper, for a website or instruction manual, etc. Additionally, they are also limited by the amount of words they can translate per minute.

To convey the purpose of your brand and deliver the right message to your audience, you need a human to effectively translate the essence (and not just a literal meaning) of your message. A machine is a machine after all; some jobs are left best in human hands!

The aforementioned are top four exclusive key tends in the translation industry that you should follow! Let us know what you think is the most essential to the industry. Do you have more to add to the list?

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