Meaning across languages

This branch covers preserving medical meaning in translation, divided by the linguistic question: lexical meaning, equivalence, differences between languages, literal rendering and the consequences of errors. It leaves source preparation to writing for translation and localisation, text-specific procedures to specialised translation, and commissioning, revision and quality assurance to translation projects.

• How word meaning crosses languages — lexical meaning, smaller units, phrases and gaps between vocabularies
• What equivalence can and cannot promise — substitution, levels of equivalence, and fidelity to meaning and function
• What changes when a medical text moves between languages — length, structure, register, variants, terminology and concepts
• Where literal translation fails — word choice, English-to-Spanish examples, sentence recasting and genre
• What a bad translation costs — patient harm, recalls, hidden errors, regulatory consequences and credibility