Award winning translation blog

I know we say this a lot, but research and knowledge of a subject are absolutely paramount when translating specialist texts, especially when it comes to providing medical translation services. This is not just because research and background knowledge is essential in choosing the right translation (though that is a large part of it) – it can also be necessary when deciding whether to translate a term in a medical document at all.

Medicine is a field which is constantly developing, and new research is frequently published. Because of this, medical professions are constantly updating their lexicon, and to save time often learn in the language that the research was published in. This means that foreign terms proliferate, especially English ones, and sometimes it is clearer to use a foreign word than to translate it, though this will depend on the target audience. Medical translators need to be aware of this, and have the expertise required to deal with this issue.
Medical translation services should work only with medical translators who have proven experience in the translation of medical documents. This may sound obvious, but you would be shocked at how many translation companies don’t do this! Veritas only works with medical translators who have a minimum of 5 years’ professional medical translation experience, not including time spent at university.
If you would like more information about our medical translation services, please don’t hesitate to contact us for ...

Technical translations are often regarded as the less attractive or non glamorous type of translations, especially in academic circles.
There are some misconceptions about technical translations, one of the most widespread being the inclusion of many different areas such as economics, law and business within a classification of technical translations.

Why is that? Why do people put so many industries under the one category of ‘technical’? Apparently, the main reason is because we tend to mix two different subject areas: specialized translations and technical translations, instead of including the second in the first one. That’s a mistake, since, just because a field or subject area uses specialized terminology it doesn’t necessarily make it technical, but each area has its own unique characteristics and conventions. For instance, technical translation is in reality a translation of technological texts, such as technical manuals, instructions, guides, etc.

Technical translators do not have the same linguistic and writing skills as other types of translator. For example, a literary translator or a linguist who works with advertising material has a completely different approach to their work, in addition to a distinct writing style, which is alien to the technical translator. This is because the conventions of technical writing are much stricter. Technical terms almost always have a standardised equivalent in the target language, whereas literary works offer a much more free ...

This week’s posts have been a varied bunch! We have talked about different aspects of translation, interpreting and the alphabet, and we hope you have enjoyed reading about them! We love writing these posts and offering advice and information to aspiring linguists, as well as discussing common issues that can arise in the industry, so please do share your knowledge and experience in the comments section if you feel that you can add to the posts. As always, we look forward to hearing from you!

Here is a reminder of what has been covered this week:

Translating, Interpreting Communicating: Why We Love Languages!
I reflected on my personal experiences with languages in this post, but we’d love to hear your stories. Why did you choose translation or interpreting? Did they choose you?

Y…for Yankee
The penultimate post in our Alphabet Blog series told the story of the letter Y., the only English letter to be used as both a vowel and a consonant.

Conference Interpreting: The Basics
A run-down of conference interpreting and the skills required for linguists looking to move into this fascinating branch of the industry.

Last and Least, Z
Lauren takes us through the last of our Alphabet Blog posts. Should we stop neglecting the letter z and adopt some American spellings?

Language Translation: Sharing Knowledge Across Borders
Lauren asks ...