Linguote

February 8 2018

Blind spot or punto ciego

Daniela GuanipaEnglish, Linguote, Spanish, terms blind spot, punto ciego 1

While the term is the same in English and in Spanish, our Spanish speakers might have had a slight advantage on this one. Used in everyday language, ‘blind spot’ is an area where a person’s view is obstructed, particularly when driving. However, the term comes from the medical lexicon and refers to a light-insensitive area where the optic nerve enters into the retina.

In Spanish, the commonly used term is punto ciego, and in medical lingo we can also find mancha ciega, which directly matches the English term. A more technical synonym is escotoma fisiológico, and this brings us to an even more interesting parallelism:

In English, ‘blind spot’ is also used figuratively as “an area in which one fails to exercise judgment or discrimination“, whereas in Spanish we find the term escotoma mental, used in the field of psychology with a similar meaning: An intellectual, affective or sensorial area that has disappeared from a person’s consciousness.

January 18 2018

Intrigued by this green bean? Meet a porcelain gallbladder

Daniela GuanipaEnglish, life sciences, Linguote, medical, terms calcifying cholecystitis, colecistitis calcificante, gallbladder, linguotes, medical translation, medicina, porcelain gallbladder, traducción médica, vesícula, vesícula escleroatrófica 2

Although this cutie might seem like a green bean, it’s actually a gallbladder showing what doctors call a porcelain gallbladder.

Also known as calcified gallbladder, calcifying cholecystitis, or cholecystopathia chronica calcarea, the disease is the result of extensive calcification of the gallbladder. Its picturesque name refers to the bluish discoloration and brittle consistency of the gallbladder wall that can be seen during surgery.

According to the Revista Médica de Costa Rica y Centroamérica, this disease was first described in 1831 in France, but the term porcelain gallbladder was not used until 1929.

In the Spanish-speaking world, the term vesícula en [or de] porcelana is widely used, along with colecistitis calcificante, vesícula escleroatrófica, and colecistopatía calcárea crónica.

April 20 2017

Non-infectious Models

Daniela GuanipaEnglish, life sciences, Linguote, mistranslation, Spanish biomedicina, errores, infection models, life sciences, medical translation, mistakes, modelo de infección, traducción, traducción médica 0

This drawing was inspired by the mistranslation of the following source text: “No infection models demonstrated increased mortality risk by interleukin-specific antagonism (…)”

Original translation: Modelos no infecciosos mostraron un aumento del riesgo de mortalidad por antagonista específico de la interleucina (…)

While it is true that the English is also at fault here (it should read “No infection model demonstrated…), this is a clear example of a translator in auto-pilot. Thus, the incorrect interpretation of the source text leaves us with a case of modelos no infecciosos (non-infectious models), and a completely erroneous translation.

How it should read in Spanish: Ningún modelo de infección demostró un aumento del riesgo…

Quite different!