About Spanish

Spanish, also known as Castilian, is spoken by approximately 400 million native speakers around the world and it is the second most spoken language in the United States of America. It is likely to be the fourth most spoken language around the world by total number of speakers (native and non-native, about 500 million), after Mandarin Chinese, Hindi, and English.

Spanish is classified as a Romance language because it descends from Vulgar Latin, the language spoken by settlers, soldiers, and merchants during the Roman Empire. As a Romance language, it shares several linguistic features (lexicon, morphology, phonology and syntax) with other Romance languages such as French, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, and others.

Even though it originated in a small area north of the Iberian Peninsula, it was widely spread around the world (the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Oceania) during the 15 th and 19 th centuries by the Spanish Empire. Today, Spanish is the official language of 21 countries (mostly in the Western Hemisphere), one of the official languages of United Nations, one of the official languages of The European Union, and the third most commonly used language in the internet (after English, and Chinese).

Spanish Medical Translation

Common translation pairs in Spanish are English to Spanish translations and Spanish to English translations. In the medical world, English to Spanish Medical Translation is more prevalent than Spanish to English Medical Translation. Two possible reasons may be attributed to this trend:

1.  English is a language in which much clinical and scientific research is conducted and published, thus many advances in life sciences and medicine are first available in English and then translated into other languages.

2.  The Hispanic population growth worldwide and governmental policy, especially in the United States requires that patients receive medical information in a language that they can understand (i.e. State of California 's Patients Rights Section B. Additional Rights Subsection 2 Right to Cultural Competency). This has led to the translation of thousands of patient education materials from English into Spanish within the United States alone.

Even though there are many technical, medical, and scientific terms introduced into the English language yearly, English is a more concise language than Spanish, and thus, it takes on average 20%-25% more text to express the same meaning or idea in Spanish than in English. This can be particularly challenging when the look and layout of the original document needs to remain intact as when an English medical web page is translated into Spanish, but the graphics and layout remains intact (click here to see an example where a medical web site was translated into Spanish by Latino Medica Consultants).

An important factor to take into account translating into any language is translation transparency. Even though the term Spanish refers to one language and Spanish speakers from different countries understand each other during verbal communication, there are numerous variations of the Spanish language among the different cultures that use it. Some of these differences may be easily noticeable (i.e. the use of the pronoun "vos" in Argentina) and some may be subtle (i.e. different meaning to the same word). The Spanish used in Mexico is in many aspects different from the Spanish in Argentina; which in turn, is different from the Spanish spoken by the different Hispanic communities within the United States. In translation, underestimating variations of the same language used by different cultures can significantly hinder proper communication. Here is an example:

Source US English: “After surgery, your physical therapist may recommend the use of handrails and grab bars, especially when getting in and out of the shower”

Target Spain, Colombia, or Chile: “Después de la cirugía, su fisioterapeuta le puede recomendar  cogerse de las barandas y agarraderas, especialmente al entrar y salir de la ducha"

Even though this translation would be appropriate when addressing Spanish speakers in Spain, Colombia and Chile, a native Spanish speaker from Mexico Venezuela or Argentina would be extremely confused with this translation because the word “cogerse” has a sexual connotation in these countries. Additionally, some speakers from Mexico may not be too familiar with the words fisioterapeuta (for physical therapist). A more appropriate translation, culturally adapted to a mixed audience from Mexico, Venezuela or Argentina would be:

Target Mexico, Venezuela, or Argentina: “Después de la cirugía, su terapeuta físico le puede recomendar sujetarse de las barandas y agarraderas, especialmente al entrar y salir de la ducha”

However, if the translation was exclusively directed to Mexican health care professionals, a more suitable translation would read:

Target health care professionals in Mexico: “Después de la operación, su fisioterapeuta puede recomendarle  que se detenga de los barandales y agarraderas, especialmente al entrar y salir de la regadera”

Since quality in medical translation entails high accuracy (fidelity and transparency), and there are a lot of cultural differences within Spanish speaking populations, cultural adaptation should be considered in much detail when translating into Spanish. At Latino Medica Consultants, translation transparency (which includes amongst others cultural adaptation) is addressed by ensuring that the translation team includes a member who understands the culture of the target language in detail: a native speaker. If you are a Medical or Life Science business looking for consistent high quality medical translations into Spanish, please contact us so that we can discuss how we can serve you. Also, feel free to browse through our examples section to review our medical translation work.