Translation is the step in a medical trip where cutting corners is cheapest and costs the most. A mistranslated drug name or a decimal point in the wrong place changes a clinical decision.
Where machine translation fails
- Drug names. Many have near-identical spellings across languages and completely different drugs behind them. Machine translation also happily translates a brand name into a different brand.
- Units and decimals. mg and µg, mmol/L and mg/dL, and the continental comma used as a decimal separator. A hundredfold error looks like a normal number.
- Anatomical laterality. Left and right are single words that machines transpose, and the consequence is operating on the wrong side.
- Abbreviations. A local abbreviation may expand into something entirely different in the target language.
- Negation and uncertainty. "No evidence of metastasis" and "evidence of metastasis" differ by one word that models drop.
What we do instead
Records are translated by medical translators. Numbers, units and drug names are checked item by item against the source. The translation is delivered alongside the original, so the receiving physician can verify rather than trust.
What you can do
- Send originals as well as translations. Never let a translation travel alone.
- Send imaging in DICOM, not photographs of a screen.
- Flag anything you are unsure about. If you are unsure what a report says, say so — a reviewer who knows a gap exists handles it differently from one who does not.