Note: This is the first in a series of blog posts on the types of documents that I focus on in my translation practice. These are my areas of expertise: biomedicine, pharmaceutical sciences, public health, and international health and development.

On the business practices listserv of the American Translators Association, I recently participated on a discussion with my colleagues on translator specialization, and to what extent a novice translator should specialize. As a highly specialized translator, my view of the matter was entirely unsurprising: the more a beginner translator specializes, the better off he or she will be. When I started off as a translator a decade ago, I accepted any work they came along, and was grateful for it. Since then, I have gradually become more and more specialized, to the point where I now turn down any assignment that falls outside of my four areas of expertise: biomedicine, pharmaceutical sciences, public health, and international health and development*. This post will take a closer look at my specialization in biomedicine.

ELISA: Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay

Biomedicine

What is biomedicine? Is it just a fancy name for medicine? In fact, biomedicine is an umbrella term covering the fields of human medicine, veterinary medicine, odontology, and the fundamental biosciences such as biochemistry, biology, histology, genetics, embryology, anatomy, physiology, pathology, and microbiology. At its most basic, biomedicine deals with the health of living things. Webster’s describes biomedicine as “the study of medicine as it relates to all biological systems”.

So why do I chose to use the term biomedicine instead of simply medicine? First of all, it’s a much better description of the types of documents I translate. Although a large part of my work does fall within the field of human medicine, I also translate documents in dental medicine and veterinary medicine. I recently translated the entire doctoral thesis of a Swiss dentist. And I am regularly asked to translate documents pertaining to the development of veterinary drugs. But my use of this term to describe one of my specializations goes beyond its mere utility as an umbrella term. Biomedicine’s approach to knowledge is also an excellent fit for my translation practice. Wikipedia has an excellent description:

“Biomedicine is usually not concerned with the practice of medicine as much as it is with the theory, knowledge and research of it; its results render possible new drugs and a deeper, molecular understanding of the mechanisms underlying disease, and thus lays the foundation of all medical application, diagnosis and treatment.”

Given that most of what I translate in this area are journal articles and other research-related documentation dealing with human, dental, or veterinary medicine, I can’t think of a better description of what I do than the description above. This is why I refer to myself as a biomedical translator in my e-mail signature.

If you have a Spanish or French biomedical document that requires translation into English, or a Spanish or French document that falls into one of my other areas of expertise (pharmaceutical sciences, public health, or international health and development), please go to my contact form and send me a message asking for a free quote.

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*I’d much prefer to turn down a legal, financial, or business translation and refer it to one of my colleagues who specializes in those areas. In return, I know that they’ll soon refer an informed consent form, or medical journal article, back to me.

I am a certified freelance translator working from the French, Bosnian, Croatian, and Serbian languages into English. I started working as a freelance translator back in 2000, primarily translating and interpreting for a refugee resettlement NGO.  Around the same time, I was studying for a master’s degree in public health and so I started also doing health-related freelance translations.  I enjoyed my work as a freelancer so much that I decided to dive into the unknown and become a full-time freelance translator, eventually establishing a high degree of expertise translating in the fields of biomedicine, pharmaceutical sciences, public health and international health. I have worked on projects for a variety of Fortune 500 companies, top-tier translation agencies, international NGOs, and groundbreaking public-private partnerships.

In this blog, I plan on addressing general translation topics, business practices, translation technology, and terminology, particularly these relate to my areas of specializations: biomedicine, pharmaceutical sciences, public health and international health.  You will note that my three latest Twitter posts (“tweets”) are included in the top right sidebar of my side, which will give me an opportunity to give brief updates of my latest translation projects for potential clients, and various translation-related trivia and minutiae for my colleagues and current clients (and anyone else with an interest in translation and lexicography).

Finally, I am currently working on putting my translation portfolio as well as selected terminology databases in a format suitable for the web.  I will post a blog entry whenever these two site updates go live.