I’ve decided, it’s time!
For the last 4½ years I’ve been collating all my Spanish medical terms and research in an A4 notebook. I only have one page left and I’ve realised I can’t carry on like this.
I’m finally creating the all singing, all dancing medical TermBase (TB) I’ve been dreaming about since I started translating 4½ years ago. What was stopping me? Imposter syndrome? Lack of time? I’m sure I can think of a hundred excuses, but what the main thing is I’m finally doing it.
So what is this TermBase I hear you ask?
Essentially, it’s an electronic dictionary created for a set of languages and a specific purpose. You may recall, a couple of years ago I created a Spanish-English paddlesports TB. However, this one, is on a whole new level. Not only it this a Spanish-English-Catalan TB, it also caters for dialects and regional variations. So, where a US spelling or term might differ from a British one, or where Chile or Peru (for example) might use a different term to mainland Spain, my latest TB has the capability of incorporating all this information.
Not only is my new TB multilingual and region-specific, but it is also specialised for medical terminology. So many of the dictionaries for languages available are for everyday language use in general, that as translators, we often have to create our own specialist ones for specific subjects, such as medical, chemical, engineering, legal, marketing, etc. My new TB caters for a variety of medical subjects such as anatomy and physiology, clinical trials, medical legal. It will also contain the abbreviations for the terms in each language and will eventually enable me to search by abbreviation, speeding up the translation process in the future.
Needless to say, this is a huge undertaking and is going to take quite some time, but I’m actually quite excited about it! The thought of having all that data neatly filed away but easily accessible and available to use whenever I need to use it. Yeah ok, I’m a geek!
So there are 65 pages of terms in my notebook (not that I’ve counted). So far, I’ve added 10 pages (200 entries) to the TB. That leaves just 55 pages (around 1100 entries) for Spanish not including any new terms I encounter in the meantime (or Catalan). This could take a while …