DDD

Preface to the fourth edition (2022)

Fernando A. Navarro

Introduction (2000)

Fernando A. Navarro

There is no doubt that in the world of general and specialised dictionaries, translators are spoilt for choice. Considering the sheer number of monolingual, bilingual and multilingual dictionaries, I am sure that many readers will be surprised and somewhat sceptical about the publication of this Diccionario crítico de dudas inglés-español de medicina^†:

“What? Not another dictionary! And what a weird title!“

In the course of this introduction, I hope to convince you that a dictionary of this nature is not only necessary - I can almost hear the critics saying “it fills a gap in the bibliography” - but also that it simply has to have this title. However strange and exotic it initially sounds, the title is certainly not the result of a rash decision or fleeting fancy. Let us dissect the title, word by word.

 * This Introduction is a literal copy of the original version published in the first edition, with some very minor changes to adapt to the new typography and format of the third edition.

^† This was the title for the first two editions (Madrid: McGraw·Hill-Interamericana, 2000 and 2005); for this electronic Cosnautas edition (2013), I decided to rename it Diccionario de dudas y dificultades de traducción del inglés médico, which is the title I will use from now on in this introduction.

Why yet another dictionary?

You will find shelf-fuls of dictionaries of all shapes and sizes in a bookshop. Many of them, and specialised medical ones in particular, are heavy tomes, packed with information, often with over a hundred thousand entries.

In fact, the first thing that novel medical translators notice is the extraordinarily rich vocabulary that a medical text employs. Probably no other specialised field of translation uses so many new words. On every page of every text, there will be half a dozen terms and expressions that even well-educated people will not be familiar with: antiparkinsonian, glomerulonephritis, hepatocystoduodenostomy, hexachlorocyclohexane, keratoconjunctivitis, leukoerythroblastosis, onychotillomania, pneumoencephalography, pyelonephrolithotomy, sphenopalatine, thrombocytoagglutination, uteroenteroanastomosis. However, medical language, and indeed every scientific language, strives to be essentially universal, which is ideal for translators. As we know, many medical terms originate from Latin and Greek, and as the field grows, neologisms are created from classical roots, prefixes and suffixes. This is true of all the main European languages. In the case of the tortuous words quoted above, new medical translators with just a minimum grounding will be able to translate them straight off into Spanish (or other target language), even if they have never heard of them before: antiparkinsoniano, glomerulonefritis, hepatocistoduodenostomía, hexaclorociclohexano, queratoconjuntivitis, leucoeritroblastosis, onicotilomanía, neumoencefalografía, pielonefrolitotomía, esfenopalatino, trombocitoaglutinación and uteroenteroanastomosis. Doctor and translators, in fact, do not need to look up these words in a dictionary. Nobody turns to a bilingual dictionary to translate electrocardiogram. Yet, surprisingly, today’s medical dictionaries are bursting at the seams with such words. They contain tens of thousands of technical terms, which, despite their undeniable apparent complexity, do not ever have to be researched in a dictionary. However, when translators find an English word that entails a tiny challenge, they turn to the same dictionaries and discover that it is not there at all, is incorrectly translated or is missing some of its many possible translations.

Why a dictionary of doubts?

To answer this question, simply ask a translator to look at this sentence: Anthrax is an infectious animal disease that is transmitted to veterinarians by contact with animals. Translators will be aware that medical language is largely universal and that much of it stems from Latin and Greek. So, based on this premise, they might well presume that anthrax, in English, translates to ántrax in Spanish, even if they have never heard of these words before and do not know what they mean. Bilingual medical dictionaries will confirm this presumption, when, in fact, the truth is just the opposite. What English-speaking doctors call anthrax, we call carbunco and, vice versa, what they call carbuncle, we call ántrax. Both are infectious diseases that cause skin lesions and they share a similar etymological origin (one comes from the Greek ἄνθραξ, ‘coal’, and the other from the Latin carbunculus, ‘small coal’), but they differ significantly in the causal bacteria (Bacillus anthracis in the case of anthrax and staphylococcus in the case of carbuncle) and also in their treatment and prognosis.

The Diccionario de dudas y dificultades aims to resolve these sorts of paradoxes. Here is the entry for anthrax, which I will use to describe a typical entry structure in this dictionary:

The opening headword is immediately followed by an abbreviation in square brackets to denote the specific field. In the above example, the field is ‘microbiology, parasitology and infectious diseases’ (see the key to these abbreviations). The main body then gives the correct translation and there is a brief comment on the difference between ántrax and carbunco. The symbol ◘ denotes an English sentence that illustrates the use and meaning of the commented word in a wider context. The symbol ● is followed by complex expressions that contain the headword and are misleading or challenging to translate. They appear in alphabetical order. Finally, the symbol ►► precedes comments on the usage of anthrax and its translation. All expressions that contain the headword have their own entry in the dictionary, to make it easier to locate them. Thus, if you search for inhalational anthrax, you will be taken to this entry:

The symbol → denotes a cross reference to the entry for anthrax, and there, the symbol ● will contain the desired expression: inhalational anthrax (carbuncosis pulmonar). The same cross reference symbol → followed by a word in turquoise is also used to show that the translation of a word is explained in a completely different entry. For example, virilizing → masculinization, means that the translation problems inherent to the English word virilizing are commented on in the entry for masculinization.

The doubts to which I refer in the dictionary title are not only those that stem from false friends, which are words that are spelt identically or very similarly in two languages, but have different meanings, such as physic (which is not física, but medicina), plague (not plaga, but peste bubónica), labor (not labor, but parto) and matron (not matrona, but directora de enfermería). Translators also have gnawing doubts about Anglicisms such as rash, odds ratio, immunoblot, piercing, stent, distress and by-pass, because it appears they have no equivalent in Spanish.

Furthermore, in translation, the visual impact of the source text sometimes leads to an expression being used in the target language that is not exactly an error, but sounds unnatural because it simply is not in common usage. Take, for example, a general, non-medical expression: What would you think if you saw information technology or computer science translated as tecnología de la información or ciencia de las computadoras? These translations are not wrong, of course, but the fact is that in Spain, everyone (except Google Translate) uses the term informática, not ciencia de las computadoras. The same also applies to the field of medicine, with expressions such as human milk (leche materna rather than leche humana), weight loss (adelgazamiento rather than pérdida de peso), high blood pressure (hipertensión arterial rather than presión sanguínea alta) and liver cell (hepatocito rather than célula hepática).

Another problem, leading on from the above paragraph, is the complexity of polysemic words in English. Since many such words have a similar equivalent in Spanish, translators use the same translation time and time again, without realising that while it may absolutely correct for one particular meaning, it is actually wrong in all the other cases. For example, knife may mean cuchillo, but in the operating theatre it usually means bisturí. Worse still, words such as abuse and examination can have very different meanings indeed: child abuse (malos tratos a menores), spousal abuse (violencia conyugal), alcohol abuse (alcoholismo), heroin abuser (heroinómano), self-abuse (automutilación, autolesión or masturbación, depending on the context); clinical examination (exploración física), fundus examination (oftalmoscopia), pelvic examination (tacto vaginal), postmortem examination (necropsia, autopsia), ultrasound examination (ecografía). In these cases, the dictionary displays the different meanings in a single entry using a turquoise numbered list, as follows:

In this example, again, you will see that the simplistic translation of annular ligament (ligamento anular), which is found in most medical dictionaries, may be very convenient to use, but medical translators will be short-changed with this solution alone.

Here, I would like to clarify that the concept of ‘doubt’ in this dictionary does not coincide with its meaning in non-specialised language. With this dictionary I cannot hope to solve all the doubts that medical translators will encounter during the course of their work. When faced with an English medical text, translators may well not know the meaning of a huge number of words. However, I do not believe that these words pose a major danger because their obvious difficulty will call for further research in specialised dictionaries and reference books to clarify their meaning. The biggest danger lies in the English words or expressions that are apparently easy to translate, especially when they can be translated literally, because this often leads to incorrect, unclear, problematic or deficient translations in Spanish. Those are the doubts that will be commented on in this dictionary.

Why a critical dictionary?

As a professional translator, I have had my fill of simplistic, dogmatic dictionaries. Adding yet another to the list is far from my intention. From the very beginning, I knew that my dictionary had be a critical, reasoned one.

The last thing I want is to prohibit people from using words such as controlar, test, escáner, Western blot or baipás. Instead, I would like to offer more suitable or preferable ways of translating these and other Anglicisms, while commenting on the main problems of translating apparently simply words and expressions, such as acute abdomen, adrenaline, athlete’s foot, clinics, growth hormone, hay fever and sleeping disease.

And it is not my intention to flag certain expressions such as enfermedad cardíaca as incorrect. I simply want to make translators aware that what Spanish-speaking doctors usually call cardiopatía, is called heart disease by their British or American counterparts (and only very rarely, if ever, cardiopathy).

I am one of those medical language geeks who believe that it would be useful for all scientific translators to know that the official name for neuraminidase is exo-α-sialidase, that Spanish doctors use peroné when referring to the international anatomical term fibula, that the common laboratory animal, Macacus rhesus, is now officially called Macaca mulatta,that European blastomycosis no longer exists in the modern blastomycosis nomenclature, and that the Spanish INN carbamazepina should actually be spelt carbamacepina, following the Spanish rule of using c before e. The ultimate decision regarding which translation to use depends in each case on the source genre, the target audience and, of course, the translator’s own criteria. But what I do find illogical in most of today’s medical dictionaries, is to find glucose translated as glucosa and dextrose as dextrosa, without mentioning that they are exact synonyms: two different names for the same carbohydrate.

That is why you will find many entries in this dictionary are accompanied by a critical comment on common usage in medical practice, basic spelling rules in Spanish, official terminology recommended in standardised nomenclatures and by the main international organisations, and also the need for precision and clarity that should characterise all scientific language.

Why an English-Spanish dictionary?

For almost half a century, English has been the indisputable global language of medicine. I feel I could almost skip this section of the introduction because it is so obvious that nowadays, a medical translator absolutely has to understand English. Not only is English the source language of most translations; it is also the lingua franca of the main text books and cutting-edge journals in every field of medicine. In other words, medical translators who do not understand English may well find it impossible to solve doubts that arise when translating a medical text in French, German or any other modern language.

And this, of course, will be in addition to the multitude of doubts and misleading or challenging words that they will have to decipher when translating a medical text from French or German. However, I thought it was particularly urgent to publish, at long last, the dictionary of English-Spanish doubts that medical translators had been clamouring for for years, without which I can now hardly imagine translating effectively.

Since I am referring to medical translators as the natural beneficiaries of this dictionary, I would like to point out that my definition of this professional function is all-embracing. Translation is not included in a medical student’s training, and few doctors have become medical translators, as I have. However, most Spanish and Latin American doctors have done many informal translations during their training and later on in their career. It is an undeniable fact that the majority of today’s medical publications in Spanish are the outcome of texts that were originally written in English. Not only am I referring to medical text books edited in Spanish-speaking countries, a quarter of which are translations of foreign works. I am also particularly referring to the fact that more than 80% of the references of articles published in specialised Spanish medical journals are in English. We should acknowledge, therefore, that in countries like ours, where science plays a supporting role to the main English-speaking actors, every medical author also has to be a translator to a great extent. And, in my opinion, it is not too far-fetched to think that in a few years’ time - as was the case one generation ago with the history of medicine - medical translation and writing might be duly recognised as medical specialties in their own right.

I would also like to answer another question that I am sure many of you will be asking by now:

“OK, an English-Spanish dictionary, but which flavours of English and Spanish?”

Here, as with many aspects of this dictionary, my choice was largely determined by my personal circumstances. As a medical translator with broad experience working with multinational pharmaceutical companies and international organisations, I am only too familiar with having to tackle words that have different meanings, depending on which side of the Atlantic they hail from.

As you probably know, the word billion means a million million in England, but only a thousand million in the United States; pants are underpants for an English lord, but long trousers for a Californian; a gallon is equal to 4.55 litres in Britain, but only 3.79 liters [sic] in America; public school is a state school in the United States, but a private school in England; MD is a doctoral qualification in Oxford, but a bachelor degree in Harvard; and a US Surgeon General is the chief medical officer of the public health service, while his English namesake is the most senior medical officer of the Armed Forces.

You will also be aware of spelling differences between British and American English. In general, translators need not worry that doctors in London write tumour and haematology, while their colleagues in New York use tumor and hematology. These trivialities rarely matter when you are translating into Spanish. But sometimes they do. A British anaesthetist, for example, has the same training as his or her Spanish counterpart (in other words, they are doctors specialised in anaesthesia), while an American anesthetist is a professional individual, but not a qualified doctor, who is registered to administer anaesthesia to patients. (A US doctor specialised in anaesthesia would be called an anesthesiologist.)

These and other differences in meanings between American (and usually Canadian) English and British English (which is also used in many other countries in the world) are included in this dictionary, preceded by their respective abbreviations [US] and [GB].

However, with regard to Spanish differences on either side of the Atlantic, in the first edition of this dictionary, I used just the opposite approach. Since I was born and bred in Spain, and undertook my medical training at the University of Salamanca and at the Marqués de Valdecilla Hospital in Santander, it was logical for my dictionary to weigh heavily towards the medical language used in Spanish faculties, hospitals and clinics, scientific journals and text books. Thirteen years later, my personal knowledge of the geographical variants of Spanish has increased exponentially, and, as a result, I have paid much more attention to this aspect in this edition of Diccionario de dudas y dificultades, as explained in more detail at the end of the “Preface to the third edition“ (see above).

Why a medical dictionary?

While it is perfectly reasonable for a reader to ask this question, in my opinion it is unnecessary to do so. As a medical specialist by training and a medical translator by career, it would have been quite illogical for me to write a dictionary on heraldry, beekeeping, plumbing or Etruscan art (with all due respect, of course, for the experts in these fields).

Unfortunately, writing a medical dictionary is not that simple, because it has to include a host of common but misleading words found in medical texts that do not strictly belong to the medical sphere. Examples of such words are actual (real), American (estadounidense), library (biblioteca), vegetables (verduras) and November (noviembre), which medical translators will find time and time again in their texts. And, for the same reason, you will find thousands of entries that do not belong to the field of medicine itself but to many other similar or complementary sciences, such as pharmacy, chemistry, biostatistics, zoology, botany, genetics, molecular biology, history of medicine, bibliology, law, etc.

Some readers may think that, in that case, it would have been more correct to call this dictionary a “biomedical dictionary”, a “dictionary of health sciences” or similar fashionable title. I deliberately chose not to. When you become familiar with this dictionary, you will realise - I hope - that one of its flagship features is its condemnation of unnecessary or deliberately misconstrued euphemisms. I do not agree with the advertising tactics of pharmaceutical companies, which have stopped using ‘medicine’ (replacing it with ‘health’ to avoid any negative connotation with illness or pain) and ‘chemistry’ (to avoid any subconscious association with carcinogenic E numbers or pollution). Nor do I like the process by which big pharma, later followed by the rest of the international medical community, has gradually replaced ‘toxicity’ - a term that was used to denote a medicinal product’s ability to produce toxic effects, initially coming up with ‘tolerability’, a word with less negative connotations, and finally arriving at ‘safety’, a word with a clearly positive ring to it.

Personally, as a doctor, I have often consulted dictionaries on botany, biochemistry, genetics or pharmacy to expand my knowledge. Therefore, I hope that my colleagues in other fields will welcome a new medical dictionary, in the broadest sense of the term. I have every confidence that this medical English dictionary will be exceptionally useful, not only for doctors and medical students, but also for biologists, pharmacists, chemists and, above all, specialised translators and scientific writers.

Conventions on grammatical gender

In Spanish, unlike in English, grammatical gender is a vital syntactic function that expresses agreement among nouns, adjectives, some pronouns, articles and certain participles used as adjectives. Grammatical gender poses major challenges for lexicographers, particularly with regard to nouns that name persons.

      In a bilingual dictionary, it is fairly easy to denote the grammatical gender of inanimate nouns, since most objects have a single form and explicit gender: biopsia, for example, is always feminine; quirófano is always masculine. In a bilingual dictionary, it is therefore easy to state that "biopsy is biopsia" and "operation room is quirófano".

      However, in the case of nouns that name persons, most have a double gender form in Spanish (e.g., el cardiólogo and la cardióloga, el bioquímico and la bioquímica) or they are invariant with an implicit gender (e.g., el dentista and la dentista, el psiquiatra and la psiquiatra). Very few nouns that are invariant with explicit gender can be used for both biological sexes without changing the grammatical gender. This is true of masculine (e.g., bebé, cadáver, personaje, ser) and feminine nouns alike (e.g., criatura, familia, gente, persona, víctima).

      Nouns naming persons that undergo gender-related changes are a major problem for bilingual dictionaries. Some dictionaries opt to use an inclusive masculine form. This strategy is very common in general spoken language when referring to a person whose sex is not yet known (e.g., "espero que en este hospital haya un ginecólogo de guardia"). These dictionaries state, for example, that "neurologist is neurólogo", running the risk that their strategy may be misinterpreted as gender bias against women. Other dictionaries, on the other hand, prefer to expand the double forms and state that "neurologist is neurólogo o neuróloga" or they opt for a double abbreviated form, "neurologist is neurólogo/-ga".

      These two alternatives for solving Spanish gender variance work quite well in monolingual dictionaries (where they are used as isolated headwords) and in simple bilingual dictionaries (where direct equivalents are usually given in the form of one- or two-word entries). However, in complex bilingual dictionaries that provide a range of compound expressions, these strategies become cumbersome and confusing. For example, a good surgeon becomes un buen cirujano, una buena cirujana (not to mention un/a buen/a cirujano/­na!). Even more long-winded and convoluted are explanatory sentences with nouns, adjectives and articles that all express gender agreement. A sentence such as "Además del médico adjunto y el auxiliar administrativo, solamente pueden estar presentes el paciente ingresado y un amigo íntimo o un familiar cercano" should reflect all its variants: "Además de la médica adjunta y el auxiliar administrativo, solamente pueden estar presentes la paciente ingresada y un amigo íntimo o una familiar cercana", "Además del médico adjunto y la auxiliar administrativa, solamente pueden estar presentes el paciente ingresado y una amiga íntima o un familiar cercano", "Además de la médica adjunta y la auxiliar administrativa, solamente pueden estar presentes la paciente ingresada y un amigo o amiga íntimos o una familiar cercana" and scores of other possibilities that the Spanish language contemplates. Instead of increasing the reader's understanding, these strategies actually further confuse the issue. Worse still would be a double expanded option ("Además del médico adjunto o la médica adjunta y el auxiliar administrativo o la auxiliar administrativa, solamente pueden estar presentes el paciente ingresado o la paciente ingresada y un amigo íntimo o una amiga íntima o un familiar cercano o una familiar cercana") or a double abbreviated option ("Además del/de la médico/­ca adjunto/­ta y el/la auxiliar administrativo/-va, solamente pueden estar presentes el/la paciente ingresado/-da y un/a amigo/-ga íntimo/-ma o un/a familiar cercano/-na").

      The options for nouns that name persons also apply to all English adjectives for persons and things, but with an even greater degree of complexity. This is because adjectives have gender and number in Spanish, but not in English. An adjective such as white, for example, would be blanca in white skirt (falda blanca), but blancos in white trousers (pantalones blancos). So, in an exhaustive bilingual dictionary, it would no longer suffice to say that white means blanco, as is usually the case, but white means blanco, blanca, blancos or blancas or, in the abbreviated form, white means blanco(s)/-ca(s). Again, this is extremely cumbersome and confusing, which is just what a dictionary seeks to avoid.

      Therefore, the time-old practice in the history of lexicography is to tend towards simplicity and clarity over exhaustiveness. Everyone who regularly uses a monolingual dictionary will know, for example, that bisturíes has to be searched for as bisturí, because it does not have its own entry. Likewise, soy, eras, fue, seremos and serían have to be searched for as ser; librito as libro; dificilísimo as difícil, and so on and so forth.

      I have never heard anyone suggest that searching for different verb forms using the infinitive shows bias against past, present, future or imperative conjugations. And no one contends that finding Spanish plurals only by searching for singulars implies a number bias that might empower the individualistic nature of our modern capitalist society against the plurality and sense of community that is defended by the social revolution of Christianity or anarchy. Everyone readily understands that these are mere conventions of usage, designed to simplify dictionary searches, with an eminently practical purpose. So it should not be hard to interpret grammatical gender conventions the same way, as simple grammatical conventions designed for practicality.

      In the Dictionary of doubts and difficulties in English medical translation, I have sought to avoid the long-windedness of expanding each and every Spanish grammatical gender variant of an English term or phrase. I have therefore opted to apply the following conventions:

1. For headwords and compound expressions (denoted by the symbol ●), and in the main body of the articles, I have given the Spanish equivalent in an inclusive or generic single gender form. In line with general Spanish usage, the inclusive gender is usually masculine, except for a few cases in which the inclusive feminine form is used in general speech to represent both grammatical genders. Therefore, the equivalent terms rheumatologist (reumatólogo) and obstetric nurse (comadrona), should be interpreted in the standard, underlying sense of rheumatologist (reumatólogo or reumatóloga, depending on the context) and obstetric nurse (comadrona or comadrón, depending on the context), respectively.

2. In the case of example sentences (denoted by the symbol ◘), however, I have used the inclusive masculine form only (or, more rarely, the inclusive feminine form) when the example refers to a group of men and women or a person of indeterminate or unknown sex. In all other cases, I have tried to alternate examples in which an English noun has a standard, underlying Spanish masculine equivalent with others that have a feminine one, so that the reader is constantly aware that the transformation from English to Spanish involves an inherent grammatical gender decision. Therefore, with words such as child and doctor, the reader will encounter example sentences such as My child is badly injured (mi hijo está gravemente herido) and The doctor ordered complete rest (la médica le prescribió reposo absoluto) together with other examples such as She was often ill as a child (de pequeña se ponía enferma con frecuencia) and The doctor put the patient out for surgery (el médico anestesió a la paciente para la intervención quirúrgica).

      Notwithstanding the above, for some entries where I feel it would be useful for the reader to have access to more detailed comments, I have discussed specific problems encountered when translating English - a language with almost no traces of grammatical gender - to Spanish, where this feature is ever present. Take, for example, the first comments on usage (denoted by the symbol ►►) in the entry for Dr. or the comment on meaning usage (denoted by the symbol ►) in meaning one, sub-meaning a), in the entry for nurse.

Preface to the first Brazilian edition by Dr. Carla Vorsatz

Cuando, en vísperas de la pandemia, a finales de 2019, recibí de Fernando Navarro la invitación a hacer la edición brasileña de su célebre Libro rojo, supe inmediatamente que estaba frente a una tarea hercúlea, pero más que necesaria.

Hercúlea por la calidad de la obra, su tamaño y la naturaleza del trabajo que me encargó: no quería una traducción de su diccionario, sino una obra derivada, una edición brasileña de su diccionario.

Naturalmente lisonjeada, acepté el desafío.

Después de todo, como Navarro, tengo una doble formación: como traductora, dueña de una pequeña empresa de traducción médica desde 1996, y como médica, con una especialización en enfermedades infecciosas y parasitarias, y amplia experiencia en la investigación clínica y la medicina de urgencias, lo que me pareció cualificación suficiente.

La gran cercanía entre ambas lenguas romances muchas veces me hizo avergonzarme ante nuestra colonización por el inglés. La fidelidad hispánica a nuestras raíces románicas, utilísima en el vocabulario médico de origen grecolatino, fue lo que me llevó a elegir las opciones que me parecían más apropiadas para mi tarea, como por ejemplo estas: el ácido desoxirribonucleico es llamado ADN y el ácido ribonucleico es llamado ARN, en vez de DNA y RNA, al igual que todos sus derivados (ARN mensajero = ARNm, etc.). Los términos para los virus y las enfermedades que estos provocan, inclusive sus siglas, son traducidos al portugués, en caso de que ya estén registrados en el Vocabulario ortográfico de la lengua portuguesa (VOLP) o recogidos en los principales diccionarios brasileños. Lo mismo sucede con los extranjerismos: cuando son aceptados por la norma, aquí se escriben debidamente en cursiva, como el tan habitual abstract. Todas las opciones ortográficas son las del VOLP.

El hilo conductor de la traducción es ofrecer en determinado idioma informaciones provenientes de otro idioma a lectores y oyentes monolingües. Por consiguiente, no tiene el menor sentido importar vocablos, falsos amigos y estructuras sintácticas y semánticas del idioma original para insertarlos en el idioma al que se está traduciendo. Esta es la trampa en la que caen los bilingües que no son traductores.

Navarro nos revela cada una de esas trampas con claridad y concisión en el universo de las traducción médica, ofreciendo las mejores opciones de traducción y comentando las alternativas erróneas ya consagradas por el uso. La idea no es crear nuevos dogmas, sino acompañar el movimiento natural de la lengua sin permitir que se destruya, como ya sucede con tantas otras. Y para eso el tono es el de una conversación entre amigos, en el salón de la casa, donde hablamos de un asunto que nos interesa.

¡Y cómo nos interesa!

Este es el primer diccionario de traducción médica en portugués.

Sin duda existen muchos diccionarios médicos, antiguos, concebidos por médicos eruditos y dirigidos a los propios médicos, verdaderas exquisiteces lexicográficas, etimológicas y vernaculares. Son valiosísimos para nuestra cultura médica, pero resultan abstrusos para los traductores. Ya existen algunos pequeños diccionarios, algunos bilingües, hechos por traductores, ninguno de un solo autor.

También existen diccionarios médicos contemporáneos en otros idiomas, que aunque tengan un innegable valor para el traductor médico y el estudiante de medicina, como han sido traducidos por varios traductores, resultan bastante heterogéneos en su vocabulario y terminología.

Nuestro diccionario es diferente por cuanto está hecho por y para médicos y traductores médicos. Además, es un diccionario sobre dudas y dificultades de traducción médica, lo que lo vuelve todavía más peculiar. La edición brasileña del original inglés-español la elabora una médica y traductora médica brasileña que siempre trabajó en Brasil.

A mi entender, esto nos aporta una factor diferenciador en lo que se refiere a recursos instrumentales para la redacción médico-científica entre el inglés y el portugués, posibilitándonos la excelencia en nuestro ámbito de conocimiento en los dos idiomas.

No por casualidad el lanzamiento del Dicionário de dúvidas e dificuldades da tradução médica do inglês para o português estuvo a cargo de la Asociación Brasileña de Traductores e Intérpretas (Abrates) con el apoyo del Sindicato Nacional de Tradutores (Sintra), a los cuales extiendo mis más profundos agradecimientos en la figura de sus presidentes, Giovanna Lester y Ana Beatriz Caldeira Ferreira Braga Dinucci, respectivamente.

No sería posible terminar este prólogo sin hablar del aspecto más revolucionario de este diccionario: está vivo. Sí: vivo, y es palpitante, cambiante e interactivo. Por ser exclusivamente digital, todas las entradas tienen al pie de la página un formulario de contacto para dudas, sugerencias, críticas y propuestas de términos que querríais que constaran en el diccionario, datos sobre regionalismos, otras formas de hablar en otras variantes de portugués, críticas, sugerencias de enmiendas, etcétera. Respondo a todos los mensajes, y en la respuesta informo de decisiones ya tomadas (un pequeño error de puntuación ya corregido en pantalla) o que van a ser tomadas (si figurarán o no en una próxima edición y cuándo). Los nombres de todas las personas que colaboran quedan para siempre registrados en los agradecimientos de cada edición.

Finalmente, no dejen de leer el prefacio a las ediciones españolas, por favor. Allí, Navarro explica en detalle el uso del diccionario, lo que significa cada símbolo, su historia, las opciones lexicográficas, todo lo necesario para que el diccionario sea usado con facilidad y maestría.

¡Buen provecho!

Dedicatoria

Dominique Perrot, for all and everything.

Acknowledgments

First, to the beloved daughters that life has given me together with their loved ones, Anaik and Tato, Laís and Jaime, and my grandson Oliver, and to the loved ones that good fortune brought me later: my daughter Ana Paula Keila and my granddaughter, her daughter Mila, and to my grandson Tomás, with whom I share my life and who always keep my heart warm.

To my very dear teacher and friend, Dr. Jacqueline Anita de Menezes, who introduced me to medical translation, instructing me and accompanying me along the way, and with whom I learned and continue to learn the many aspects of the job.

To all my patients, who taught me the practice of medicine and trusted me, allowing me the privilege of taking care of their health, and opening the doors to their personal lives, something that has always made me feel honoured as a professional and a human being.

And last but not least, to Fernando Navarro–thank you for giving me the enormous gift of bringing the Libro rojo to my language, my country and my life with your infinite kindness and warmth. To the inestimable and always friendly and helpful José Antonio de la Riva Fort, thank you for your unconditional support, unbeatable willingness and bright smile. Your companionship on this trip made it all possible and very enjoyable. And to Constanza Cervino, whose gentleness, professionalism, collaboration, persistence, commitment with the Brazilian edition and untiring dedication made all the difference.

Acknowledgements for version 1.02

On 9 April, Medscape Português began publishing weekly unpublished texts from the Dictionary of Doubts and Translation Difficulties from Medical English to Portuguese or DDD, even before its launching on May 14^th, 2022. My sincere appreciation for their support and encouragement.

I would also like to place on record my appreciation for the support provided by Abrates (Brazilian Association of Translators and Interpreters), Sintra (National Union of Translators and Interpreters), and HighFive, company responsible for the brilliant simultaneous interpretation of the event, with the support of Tradusa - Meetings - Courses - Workshops, for having carried out the launching of the Dictionary of doubts and difficulties of translation from medical English to Portuguese on May 14^th, 2022. In addition, Abrates made available for 30 days a recording of the release on its YouTube channel, an additional reason for gratitude. My thanks to Giovanna Lester, Eleonora Nascimento of Alcântara Barros, Bruno Murtinho and Reinaldo Rocha, and Cátia Santana, respectively, as well as to Damiana Rosa, and to the interpreters coordinated by Norma Medina: the Spanish and Portuguese interpreters Meg Batalha and Enrique Julio Romera, and sign language interpreters Karoline Andrade, Suzana Souza and Marlon Soares.

I would also like to thank the director of Cosnautas, Dr. José Antonio de la Riva Fort, and Constanza Cervino for being part of the launch table and presenting the different aspects involved in the difficult task of transforming the unique Libro Rojo into a Brazilian edition apt to respond to the needs of the Portuguese-speaking public.

And, of course, to Dr. Fernando A. Navarro, author of the original Libro Rojo, of which the Brazilian edition is a derivative work, my most sincere and deep gratitude for entrusting me with the task of making accessible to Brazil and to all Portuguese-speakers medical translators throughout the world the inestimable worth of his work.

Contributors to version 1.12

Debora Blanco

Contributors to version 1.11

Mirtes Pinheiro

Contributors to version 1.06

Ana Elisa Igel, Ana Maciel, Ana Maria Barreiros, Anthonio João, Carolina Ribeiro, Cátia Santana, Claudia Corbusier, Claudia Dornelles, Christiane Karydakis, Daniel Fernandes, Dawn Taylor, Ester Dodo, Estevam Sampaio Rebouças, Giovana Lester, Jacqueline Anita de Menezes, Joana Bernardes dos Santos, Joaquim Bezerra, Júlio César Leites Rodriguez, Karine Souto, Kathleen Goldsmith Killing, Kelly Elizeu, Lavinia Gondim, Leonardo Faria , Luiz Sérgio de Oliveira, Marcos Henrique Martins, Maria Aparecida Amim de Carvalho, Maria Dolores Wanderley, Maria Helena Almeida Pereira, Miriã Carper, Mateus Baldi, Mirtes Pinheiro, Monica Carneiro, Norma Medina, Patrícia Gimenez Camargo, Rached Cavalcanti, Rhuan Contardi, Sofia Pulici, Sonia M Joventino, Talita Domiciano, Talitha Bittencourt Austin, Thaiane Assumpcao, Vera Lucia de Godoy Bueno Larsson, Vinicius Carvalho, Virginia Lovisolo

Contributors to version 1.05

Alan Dalles, Beatriz Araujo do Rosário, Debora Branco, Jacqueline Anita de Menezes, Laura Bocco, Marcia Gouveia, Marisol Mandarino, Nilo Sérgio Loja da Silva, Paulo César Hoffman Dorna, Ricardo Bertoni, Talita Domiciano

Contributors to version 1.04

Bruno de Carvalho, Carlos Garrido Rodrigues, Laís Volp, Marcelo de Oliveira Lima

Contributors to version 1.03

Ana Paula Keila Vicente Vieira, José Ernando Souza Filho, Kenny Hernandez, Laura Bocco, Marcelo Lima

Contributors to version 1.02

Gisele Klein, Elionai Paes, Cátia Santana, Bernardo Schubsky, Leoleli Schwartz, Ana Paula Keila Vicente Vieira y Laís Volp

Contributors to version 1.01

Americo Grilo, Ana Paula Keila Vicente Vieira, Chadwick Wenga, Claudia Yanomine, Constanza Cervino, Cristina de Amorim Machado, Fabio Santana, Juan Manuel Igea, Kenny Hernandez, Laís Volp, Luiz Carlos Fraga, Marisol Mandarino

Bibliographie