Glossary of doubts and difficulties English Spanish for paediatricians (1st part: A-I)

This is the second of a series of three papers where the author explains and comments some of the most important mistakes in the medical language in Spanish and the way to avoid them in the specialised medical publications. The incorrect use of the language in medicine is not only a matter of linguistic purity, but it seriously influences our specialised language, introducing severe imprecision and lessening clarity. Taking real examples from medical publications in Spanish, the author reviews some of the more severe mistakes of medical language, which injure the three essential features of any scientific language: veracity, precision and clarity.

The theory is completed with a bibliographic selection on medical writing and language, as well as a wide English-Spanish glossary with about two hundred words and English expressions of difficult or misleading translation in Paediatrics. The specialist will find in this glossary terms such as abuse, acetaminophen, borderline, BRAT diet, cerebral palsy, child life, FLK, follow-up milk, immunization, infant, isolette, parent, paediatric age, percentile, recumbent length, respiratory distress syndrome, shaken baby syndrome, surfactant, toilet training, tweenager, unthriftiness or young children, among many others of not so easy translation as could seem at first sight.

Keywords: Medical translation. English-Spanish. False friends. Medical writing.