How not to translate

I am just back from an interpreting appointment at a Providence Health System hospital. While there, I noticed they had some brochures in Spanish. On one it says, right on the cover, "Usted sentirá la calidad de nuestra atención," which is meant to translate "A Caring Difference You Can Feel." In fact, it really can mean, appropriately enough, "you will feel the quality of our care"; unfortunately, it can also easily be interpreted to mean "you will regret the quality of our care"!

If I were Providence, that is not something I would want on the front of my brochure.

Inside the brochure, there are other questionable translations, each revealing a translator who knows a lot of Spanish and how to use a dictionary, but also revealing a translator who does not know how things are normally said in Spanish.

"Health care" has been translated as "cuidado a la salud," which is not normal Spanish; "atención médica" is.

"Administración apropiada de su dolor" is probably meant to translate "appropriate management of your pain," but the choice of "administración" (instead of "manejo" or "control") makes it sound like the pain will be appropriately inflicted, not appropriately managed. I know that, if I were a patient, I would be surprised to learn that I had a right to have my pain appropriately inflicted!

Signs in the hospital itself referred to the "facilidad médica," which makes no sense in Spanish unless you are saying someone has a real "medical knack," whatever that is. "Medical facility" is either "instalación médica" or, far more commonly, "centro médico."

This is the kind of translation you get when the translator takes the English term and creates a "Spanish" term by translating the English words. While that is certainly a lot faster and easier (and therefore cheaper) than doing any research, the result is a term that no Spanish speaker will understand, much less be able to decipher, without knowing enough English to piece together what meaning was intended. If your Spanish-speaking patients know that much English, then they don't need your Spanish brochure! And if they do not know that much English, then they will not understand your Spanish brochure!

Naturally, if you are having something translated into Spanish, you want Spanish speakers to be able to understand it...and without having to know enough English to correctly guess what you intended to say. That is why it is not enough to have someone "bilingual" translate your material into "Spanish." You need a professional translator who can translate your message into real Spanish that your real Spanish-speaking audience will really be able to understand.