Our team at Surrey Translation Bureau has been working hard over the summer months to complete the last stage of ‘Simple Words for Health’, a terminology project launched by two Translators without Borders’ (TWB) board members; Val Swisher (Content Rules, Inc. founder) and Andrew Bredenkamp (Acrolinx founder). This English language database of simplified medical terms was put together with the goal of making medical terminology more accessible and our task has been to weed out any unnecessary duplicate entries.
We first volunteered our services following a chance encounter at the Institute of Translation and Interpreting’s conference in Newcastle earlier this year, where TWB’s Sue Fortescue and I struck up a conversation when our stands were placed side by side. Sue really inspired me and our team to do something to help and as soon as we were back in the office we put our heads together to see what we could do for TWB! This project was a great match for us as our in-house team has a strong medical translation background and a keen interest in terminology, plus it was something our translators and project managers (who are fully-qualified linguists) could work on collectively.
The project has required a real team effort and our staff put in the hours to make sure this really important work was completed to a high standard. Special thanks go to our in-house translator, Jenny Mallinowski, who, as well as completing the lion’s share, has coordinated the project internally and even made an FAQs and software ‘How to’ guide for the rest of us to keep things running smoothly.
Last year we donated to TWB at Christmas instead of sending presents to our clients and this year we have tackled this rewarding terminology project. We’re looking forward to seeing what we can do next to help such a fantastic cause.