Social support in palliative care

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Medical science is a broad specialization. Last week, it overlapped with palliative care management. See what I learned on my blog. Link in bio. #medicalscience #pharma #clinicaltrials #healthcare #translator #keeplearning #translation #french #english

A post shared by Brooke A. Cochran (@bcochranhuman) on May 30, 2019 at 8:07am PDT

While my specialization is medical science, that is a broad term and it often overlaps with topics like hospital management, ethics, and statistics.

As a result, when I do French to English translations, I work most efficiently on documents discussing cancer, leukemia, skin disorders, and similar areas. Inevitably, though, one of those disorders becomes the subject of, say, how a hospital approaches its management (e.g. referring departments, multidisciplinary meetings). As I learned last week, I must take extra care and time with my work when this occurs.

​For example, last week, the subject was social support in palliative care management of cancer patients. At first, I thought, "Piece of cake! No difficult terms, biological explanations, or chemical processes to translate." The latter was true, but the “easy” part turned out to be a poor assumption on my part.

​Right away, I had to learn the difference between palliative and hospice care to ensure I was using the correct terminology. I found the French definition from WHO to be quite useful, “Les soins palliatifs améliorent la qualité de vie des patients qui sont confrontés à une maladie engageant le pronostic vital, ainsi que celle de leurs familles. Les moyens utilisés consistent à prévenir et atténuer la souffrance en intervenant précocement pour identifier, évaluer et traiter la douleur et les autres souffrances physiques, psychosociales et spirituelles.” (https://www.who.int/ncds/management/palliative-care/introduction/fr/).

Another challenge was choosing distinct terms in English for the common French word “démarches,” which was modified by the adjectives “financial” and “administrative,” and employed as a noun “involved in funeral planning.” I could not settle on one word for all three, as the French author had conveniently done. I scratched my brain, played with combinations, and said them out aloud, even left my desk for awhile and came back with a, hopefully, clear head. In the end, I chose â€œtasks” and “measures,” where appropriate. A simple word ended up requiring more scrutiny than a more technical one about PCR assays of DNA samples.

​If you are a translator or thinking about becoming one, remember, it is important to specialize, but be prepared to be flexible and exercise those research skills when your client sends you a project involving two overlapping fields.