My translations of medical documents are about serious subjects. Cancer, SAE’s, hospital management, etc. They are not a laughing matter. However, that does not stop me from finding, on occasion, a "language nerd" type of humor in my work.
 
While translating a scientific article (explored previously), I came across a wonderful term that made me burst into laughter, dispersing the academic cloud hovering over my desk. In English, the word is glomerular crescent. In French, croissant glomérulaire. It is a histological finding that signals extensive glomerular damage. More precisely, according to this article, “A crescent is made up of proliferating epithelial cells that line the Bowman capsule and infiltrating macrophages.”
 
The humor came into play when I researched the term in French for the first time. The author had assumed the reader would know what a crescent was in the context of kidney disease, hence, he did not define it. The sentence in which it appeared simply stated the percentage of croissants found on a histological exam. At first, I thought it was a reference to "growing" or "growths," since those are also correct French to English translations. However, that meaning did not fit the context. So, a quick internet search later for "croissants + histologique," and my screen contained hits for medical science articles AND several images of the famous French pastry… lovely, flaky, buttery croissants. I hadn’t even thought of that! Duh, croissants with jam, not croissants in kidneys!!!

It began with a lengthy French scientific article, in which the authors bounced back and forth between the terms "lupus nephritis" and "glomerulonephritis." Then, 2/3 of the way through, they devoted a section to discussing glomerulonephropathy. Did you catch that? The suffix changed from -itis to -pathy.
 
I submitted my translation and, shortly after, the editor contacted me to discuss the interchangeability of these terms. To ensure the final translation was accurate, we went “down the rabbit hole” of kidney diseases and their relationships with lupus. Fast forward... We learned that lupus nephritis is a form of glomerulonephritis caused by lupus (SLE), and glomerulonephropathy is its own entity.

This situation drew my attention to the value of paying attention to word endings when translating medical documents. In this specific case, the lesson was that -itis is a suffix meaning inflammation, and -pathy is a suffix referring to a disease or disorder. Therefore, when a term ended with -itis in the source document, then later ended with -pathy, that should have set off an alarm in my translator brain to dig deeper for the sake of accuracy.
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There are many other cases of suffixes and prefixes that help you understand the word you are translating, be it in your native language (mine is English) or your second language (French for me).

As a medical science translator, one of my favorite tools in Word is the table function. I have seen multiple client guidelines stating, “Do not use tabs to recreate formatting.” Hence, tables are the way to go. Whereas tabs leave you with a formatting nightmare, often requiring additional spaces to align your work, tables can be easily manipulated to create consistent formatting.

They are extremely useful when recreating lab work results. In fact, I even have a file containing “lab templates” that I can copy and paste then adjust as necessary for the current file I am translating. For example, some, but not all lab results have a final column listing the patient’s past test results. I can use that table layout for instances that don’t include that column by simply deleting it, and leaving the rest the same. This way, my work becomes more efficient because formatting is less of a chore.

If you are a translator, please look into an online tutorial on how to use tables in Word. It will be an excellent investment of your time to increase the quality of your work.

​One example of how to use tables can be found here: https://www.howtogeek.com/school/microsoft-word-document-formatting-essentials/lesson3/
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