Abstracts and Bios

How to Translate for the Healthcare Consumer: A Hands-on Workshop

This workshop will address issues of importance in translating for the largest segment of the U.S. medical translation market: the consumer of healthcare information. It will consist of discussions and practical exercises to familiarize translators with the unique challenges presented by medical documents written for the patient. Some of the topics to be covered include: using the appropriate register; protecting patients' rights; following government regulations; and making sure that a translation reflects the purpose of the document. A major focus will be the criteria used by major hospitals and medical research institutions in reviewing translations intended for their patient populations.

Maria A. Cornelio is the Director of the Hispanic Research and Recruitment Center at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City, where she oversees recruitment and language support programs for Spanish-speaking participants in clinical studies. She also provides training sessions for clinical researchers whose studies include non-English-speaking patients. She serves as Spanish-language consultant to the New York State Psychiatric Institute and teaches English>Spanish "Translation in Healthcare," a course at New York University's Center for Foreign Languages and Translation.

She has lectured extensively about medical translation and culturally-appropriate research. Before joining Columbia-Presbyterian, she held various positions with non-governmental organizations carrying out public health and health-education programs in Africa and Latin America. She has a master's degree in international studies from the University of Denver and a Diplôme d'Études Françaises from the University of Poitiers, France. She studied at the University of Seville, Spain, and has a BA in Spanish and French from Hunter College of the City University of New York.

Information Sharing: The Medical Translator's and Interpreter's Dilemma
(Pre-approved to satisfy the ATA Continuing Education Ethics requirement)

You have just completed a translation on a patient’s medical history and, the case was so interesting, you decide to erase the patient's name and use it as a training tool for other translators and interpreters. Can you use this material for teaching purposes without the customer’s consent?

You are asked by a prestigious magazine to translate an article on a specific medical condition. The information is ground-breaking news. Immediately after submitting your job, you send an email to your close friends with your translation of the article. Do you have the liberty to share this information without the customer’s consent?

You arrive at an interpreting assignment and discover that you have previously interpreted for the same patient in a detox center. During the session, the provider questions the patient about alcohol intake and the patient swears that she has never had a drink. When you know that a patient is lying, should you disclose the truth?

On a daily basis, medical interpreters and translators navigate a minefield of ethical dilemmas surrounding the sharing of information inside and out of the triadic encounter. How do professional standards of practice governing confidentiality and ethics affect real-life interpreting sessions and the translator-customer relationship? This session will address “secret keeping” in the medical encounter and issues of confidentiality and ownership when doing medical translations, as well as interpreter-patient referrals, the sharing of information between sessions, and the giving of bad news. Goals for this session include understanding whose “side” the interpreter or the translator is on, who is responsible for information-sharing in the triadic encounter or in the customer translator transaction, how professional interpreter and translator guidelines shape your conduct on a daily basis.

Zarita Araújo-Lane, LICSW is the president of Cross Cultural Communication Systems, Inc. and has over 20 years of experience working with cross cultural populations in medical and mental health organizations. She has organized a team to write and design a CCCS, Inc. training manual for medical interpreters called the Art of Medical Interpretation. She was the director of a mental health cross cultural team for over 10 years at Health and Education Services in the North Shore area and has published articles dealing with cross cultural management including a chapter written in 1996 on Portuguese families for the book Ethnicity and Family Therapy by Monica McGoldrick.

Vonessa A. Phillips is the director of the Cross Cultural Communication Institute and travels nationwide to present issues related to interpreting and cultural competency. She is a legal and medical interpreter trained at Bentley College in Massachusetts to work in the Portuguese<>English language pairs. She currently coordinates translation services at Cross Cultural Communication Systems, Inc. and is a member of the Massachusetts Medical Interpreters Association and the American Translators Assocation.

Diagnostic Imaging Studies of the Spine

Back pain is the most common allegation for disability with the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services: Disability Determination Services. Reported pain and disability may be due to anatomic abnormality, trauma, or pathology. Commonly used methods to corroborate clinically reported symptoms and to visualize the architecture of the spinal column include radiographic studies such as x-rays and computed tomography, as well as magnetic resonance imaging. Spinal anatomy and the terminology frequently encountered in imaging reports will be reviewed. Although this presentation is not language specific, sample reports in English and Spanish, as well as a Spanish<>English glossary of terminology and abbreviations will be provided.

Michael A. Blumenthal graduated from the University of Michigan with a major in zoology and a minor in English before receiving his Master's Degree in Biological Control of Insects from Cornell University. He spent four years in Colombia where he worked at a research station as a Peace Corps volunteer. After returning to the U.S. in 1983, he co-founded M&M Translations, Inc. and currently serves as its director. He is also a full-time Spanish>English translator for the Department of Assistive and Rehabilitative Services: Disability Determination Services where he translates medical records.