Useful French medical vocabulary – Building a French medical termbase

As an expert French medical translator with around 18 years of experience, it is without doubt long overdue that I started to share some of my useful tips and tricks to be able to make progress in medical translation as a career.

Indeed, as well as running my own boutique French to English medical translation agency, I also teach French translation at Newcastle University in the UK. My students are keen to learn and I often share my basic tools to help them take their first steps towards success as budding young medical translators.

One of the most fundamental of these – which should come as no surprise – is the ability to be constantly learning and remembering new terminology.

Medical translators are fluent in their language pairs, but this doesn’t mean they are walking dictionaries

One of the most common misconceptions with some people is that a translator knows every single word. This is simply not the case – and nearly impossible. Nobody can profess to know every word, even in their own mother tongue.

Building and expanding vocabulary is a constant job for any translator, regardless of the language. Nowhere is this more so that in such a specialist domain as medical translation.

How many times have you been to hospital or the GP and they have used terminology, in your own language (supposedly) which has left you perplexed at best? Quite often, I guess.

Now imagine the role of an expert medical translator. It is essential to master these terms in both your own mother tongue and your second language.

Building a French medical vocabulary termbase is essential to succeed as a medical translator

It is impossible for me to share all of my French medical vocabulary with you in this blog post as I have 18 years of technical medical jargon. However, in the same way I start out with my French translation students, it is always good and very useful to see just how to begin to build a simple medical translation termbase.

Below is my (overly simplistic) way of doing this. I always start out with a basic table with my French and English medical terms to start with, usually updating this after each project to incorporate any new medical terms.

Once I have spare time, I then sort through into domain-specific terms in Excel, having a separate tab for each type of illness, disease or medical specialism.

The below table includes a couple of examples from back pain in a GP appointment to a bowel cancer diagnosis with a specialist consultant.  

Comme-ci, comme-ca/moyen	So-so
Tenir le coup	Hanging in there
La région lombaire/le bas du dos	Lower back
Descendre/longer	To run down
Une grosse douleur	Severe pain
Un lumbago	Back pain
Un chantier	Construction site
S’accroupir	To crouch down
Une douleur lancinante	Sharp pain
Cela va de mal en pis	To go from bad to worse
Un traitement	A remedy
Je n’en peux plus !	I can’t take it anymore!
Identifier la raison	To pin down the culprit
Un employé dans le BTP	A construction worker
Un charpentier-coffreur	Formwork carpenter
Un marteau perforateur/une perceuse à percussion	Hammer drill
Un(e) médecin	Doctor
Un(e) infirmier(ière)	Nurse
Travailler malgré la douleur	To work through the pain
L’engourdissement	Numbness
La faiblesse	Weakness
Les fourmis/les fourmillements	Pins and needles
Une sensation de brulure	Burning (sensation)
Dans un délai aussi court	At short notice
Avancer une consultation	Bring a consultation forward
Trouver le sommeil	To be able to sleep
Tracasser	To bother
H24	Around the clock/24/7
Je suis tout ouïe	I am all ears
Un test immunochimique fécal (TIF) (un test de dépistage de cancer du côlon)	FIT test
Une coloscopie	Colonoscopy
Une tumeur de bas grade	Low-grade tumour
Le colon/le gros intestin	Large intestine
Se propager	To spread
Les métastases	Metastasis
Le colon sigmoïde	Sigmoid colon
Le colon descendant	Descending colon
Enlever/une ablation	Remove (organ)
Le rectum	Rectum
Une iléostomie	Ileostomy
Le grêle	Small intestine
Une petite ouverture (chirurgicale) dans le parois abdominal	Small opening in the abdomen
Une poche (une stomie)	Small adhesive bag (stoma)
Des selles	Stools
La récidive	Future reoccurrence
Sous anesthésie générale	Under GA
La salle de réveil	The recovery room
A peu près	Give or take
Un/e stomathérapeute	Stoma nurse
Un/e diététicien -ienne	Dietician
Un régime alimentaire spécial	Dietary requirements
Une appendicectomie	Operation to remove the appendix
Une fiche d’information et un formulaire de consentement éclairé préopératoire	Pre-op consent form

As you can see, it is simple in parts, often a reminder of the most common terms, or sometimes a nice turn of phrase which is useful to log. My French medical termbase also includes some of the most important medical vocabulary which is essential to proper translation. And similar to a Windows operating system, the updates keep on coming each and every week…

My name is Andrew Simpson and I am an expert French to English medical translator with over 18 years of professional experience and a Chartered Linguist. If you want a quote to discuss a French medical translation, get in touch here or give me a call today on +44(0)7307888979.