Cardiovascular diseases remain the world’s most common cause of death and disability: as estimated by the World Health Organization, they led to 17.9 million deaths in 2016. Prevention and treatment of these diseases is impossible without innovative technologies and international exchange of knowledge and experience.

In these circumstances, the role of the translation profession is growing increasingly important. For example, a large portion of cardiac equipment is imported into the Russian market, and therefore, the accompanying documentation, as well as the most advanced scientific research, are published in foreign languages. Here at Palex, we have already translated more than three million words for large foreign organizations engaged in the development and manufacture of cardiac equipment.

Translation and localization of scientific and medical content are becoming ever more complicated, and the number and variety of medical terms is increasing every year. To keep our knowledge in the field of cardiology up to date, we met with Vyacheslav Ryabov, M.D., Ph.D., Professor, Deputy Director for Research and Clinical Services at the Cardiology Research Institute of Tomsk National Research Medical Center.

Seminar participants discussed methods for preventing cardiovascular diseases, new approaches in diagnosis and treatment, particular aspects of the implementation of these approaches, and the provision of high-tech health care. We listened with great interest to what was said about interventional cardiology, which makes it possible to determine the state of the blood flow in the heart and in the brain region using minimally invasive procedures (in lieu of the classical surgical approach). What interested us most as medical translators was how minimally invasive interventions are being performed, what equipment is required, and how it actually looks.

“Often the instructions are written by specialists, for specialists: they omit obvious information and frequently use professional jargonisms, abbreviations and even corporate slang. This is why it is so important to understand the context for which a text is written: what it is about, what the tool looks like, exactly how the procedure is performed, who performs it, and when. In such cases, it is necessary to study all available videos and text materials provided by the manufacturers, to talk to medical practitioners, and to read and understand the available literature — and only then to translate. And even then, the completed translation has to be given to an expert for verification, and all questions concerning translation issues must be asked. A guess is unacceptable in a medical translation,” says Ksenia Krapivina, Translator, Linguist Quality Manager.

It should be noted that, in the field of medical translation, the lexical base is constantly expanding. This is because of a growing number of narrow specializations; new methods are emerging and existing treatment methods of cardiovascular diseases, equipment models, and types of drugs, are being improved. That is why, it is important for the medical translator master not only to the vast already established vocabulary, but also to monitor changes taking place in the field. Thus, in the seminar, we discussed current trends in the development of global and Russian cardiology – including new methods of visualization, as well as regenerative and personalized medicine based on pharmacogenetics, bioinformatics and pharmacogenomics.

In conclusion, we would like to point out that seminars like this one help to broaden medical knowledge and to reinforce all the special features of a medical text in the translator’s mind, which, in turn, improves translation quality and benefits patients.