Script replacement for Khrushchev

Imagine the following scenario:
An German pharmaceutical company makes a new medicine for chronic indigestion. If people take too much of the medicine it can lead to very serious side effects. To help make sure that no one is harmed by the medicine, the company ships it with a paper that explains the side effects. It warns that one side effect can be a “Herzinfarkt.”

Later the product is sold in the U.S. and Herzinfarkt is translated as “myocardial infarction.” A patient in the U.S. takes the medicine and later feels some pain in his chest, but he doesn’t know that a “myocardial infarction” is more commonly known as a “heart attack.” (In German Herzinfarkt is both the common and specialist term.) So he does not realize his symptoms are related to the medicine and he does not call an ambulance until the pain gets much worse. He is rushed to the hospital and barely survives but suffers serious heart damage.

But let’s rewind a little bit and see how this situation would be different with ITS. With ITS 2.0 the pharmaceutical company can use the “terminology” data category to link to information about how terms like “Herzinfarkt” should be translated. It could also use the “localization note” data category to tell the translator that the text needs to be translated for non-specialist readers. So the translator translates Herzinfarkt as “myocardial infarction (also known as a heart attack)”. As a result the patient recognizes his symptoms early on and goes directly to the hospital where he is treated before the medicine can cause serious heart damage.

While most cases won’t be quite so serious, ITS can help save lives.

Received on Wednesday, 27 November 2013 08:42:17 UTC