Selecting a Translator

Anyone with a primary school education can write, but it takes special talent and language knowledge to be a good writer. The same is true of a translator. Some of the characteristics of a good translator include:

• Having formal education in translation – having experience translating in the health care industry and with similar translation projects is ideal, but not essential to quality health care translations
• Being a good writer in the target language (most often, the target language is the translator's native language)
• Being fully fluent in the source language (near-native proficiency)
• Being familiar with the culture and diversity of the target audience
• Being familiar with colloquial expressions and language varieties

The American Translators Association (ATA) offers professional certification for translators who pass a test in a specific language pair (e.g., English and Spanish), but this alone does not assure translation competency for your translation project. Membership in professional associations like the ATA, its local chapters or international groups can be another indicator of professionalism and translation experience. But not all languages pairs are certified by ATA, and there are no special certifications for editors and reviewers of translations.

The translation candidate’s resume should explicitly cite all certifications as well as specific skills, specializations, commitment to professional development and self-improvement. Better indicators of competence are years of experience in health care translation, samples of previous work and relevant references. Individual translators often develop areas of expertise in an industry (e.g., health care, immigration, business, law) and in text types (e.g., medical-legal, technical/scientific, instruction manuals, and consumer-oriented information). This expertise is gained through years of specialized work resulting in valuable special competencies and familiarity with terminology.

Whether a freelance or agency-based translator, ATA-certified or not, the project requirements need to be clear and matched with a translator’s experience. For example, he/she may not need to be an expert on national or state laws governing advanced directives, but he/she does need to understand the significance and uses of these specialized forms. Some projects may require content to be adapted for a more specific target audience of non-native readers in terms of culture (e.g., language, values, behaviors, beliefs and conventions related to measurements, dates, and time concepts), literacy ability and less familiarity with the U.S. health care system. In some cases, a translator or writer can anticipate and make the adaptations needed for text to be useful to the target audience, in others special expertise may be required. In either case knowledge of the translation field or process is an essential requirement for producing culturally-sensitive materials. However, not all translators have the skills or the experience required for this type of rewriting. Unless requested, many translators will deliver a straight translation of the source text without considering cultural adaptation.

Finally, the search for a good translator must encompass the candidate’s personal attributes, such as a good work ethic, reliability, a desire to keep up to date and good computer, communications and research skills.  Although, when working with translation vendors, the translator and the requester rarely meet, requesters should ask to see the credentials of the person who will actually be translating your project as well as require translation vendor staff to review the translation brief with you in detail to ensure the translator and others who participate in the translation know what has been requested. Without clear written instructions, each participant in the production chain can develop their own view of the project goals. 

Additional Preparations for the Translation Process

In addition to logistical and organizational preparations for the translation process, requesters can develop several valuable resources to assist, including:

Models or Precedents
Requester organizations should consider an audit of similar projects already translated to learn from previous experience or to provide models for comparison. Also develop sample archetypes or model translation briefs from information gathered while examining the source text. Work with translators to identify conventional markers of text type, pragmatic indicators of function that tell how a text is used and the underlying assumptions embedded in the text, and then incorporate these into a translation brief template for these text types. This will help make subsequent translation instructions easier to prepare.

Style Guides and Glossaries
The absence of a standardized vocabulary for translating in the health care industry adds greatly to the inconsistency and inaccuracy often seen in translations. To avoid these and related difficulties, each organization should ideally create its own:

• Standardized glossary of commonly used words, standard phrases and descriptions used in various health care texts.
• Conventions and guides for translating the company name, business titles, proper names, frequently used acronyms and abbreviations, etc.
• Conventions and practices for translating medical terms and health care nomenclature (e.g.; “managed care”, “health care provider”) in easy-to-read translations for readers with varying literacy and familiarity with health care environments. For example, an adopted standard might say that English terms will be used once, defined and given a common replacement in the target language. Then the replacement term will be used throughout.

Organizations may also benefit from having a glossary in English and the target language(s) that replace medical terms with equivalents in commonly-used terms (e.g., lay terminology), giving due consideration to the health literacy limitations of their patients. Using memory tools and other types of terminology management programs may also help. These glossaries can then be shared with translators.