The Dictionary of Doubts in Chemical Translation (EN-ES) has been designed to fill in some existing lexicographical gaps in the field of chemistry. It equips biomedical language professionals with a functional and comprehensive tool that helps them to solve promptly and accurately many of the terminology difficulties arising from chemistry: nomenclature, instrumental techniques, fundamental concepts, or even layman’s words that have specific meanings and translations in chemistry.

The DTQ aims to be as exhaustive as possible: while other similar terminology resources tend to focus solely on a single branch of chemistry, this dictionary embraces all those that are relevant to medical and pharmaceutical translation (organic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, analytical chemistry, physical chemistry, biochemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, environmental chemistry, chemical engineering, materials science, etc.).

This work also aspires to promote chemical translation as an area of translation specialisation in its own right and to highlight its relevance for translating medical and pharmaceutical texts.

The inspiration to create a dictionary of doubts in chemical translation sprang from my work as a translation teacher at AulaSIC, a prestigious institution at which I teach chemical translation modules geared toward biomedical texts.

While preparing the teaching material and during the many interesting discussions I held with my students, it became obvious that there was a pressing need for a dictionary that would meet the accuracy and productivity requirements of those who translate and write texts involving chemical terminology: the complex and extensive chemical vocabulary and its associated translation difficulties needed to be brought together within one single resource that was both comprehensive and user-friendly.

.The content of the DTQ entries has been primarily drawn from the teaching materials that I develop and use in the classroom, as well as from the many translation difficulties I have confronted, solved and compiled throughout my career as a chemistry research scientist and translator.

Although there are other bilingual and multilingual terminology resources specialising in the field of chemistry, as far as I know, none of them meet the specific needs of medical translators and writers insofar as they do not address translation problems, but merely compile headwords and their equivalents in other languages.

Like Fernando Navarro's Libro Rojo—on which the DTQ is inspired to a great extent—, this dictionary goes well beyond that: in addition to providing all the possible Spanish equivalents of each English term or expression, it also clarifies the context corresponding to each meaning trough illustrative examples and suggested translations.

The dictionary also specifies the textual register (formal or colloquial) in which the term tends to be used; includes synonyms in Spanish and English; jargon (e.g., bomb, Buchi, greasiness...); frequent collocations and expressions (small molecule drug, free form, building block...); abbreviations (qt, r.t., rxn...); acronyms (HPLC, HBD, LG...); shortened or truncated terms (carbon tet, mass spec, quad...); symbols (Me, Hg, Mo...); chemical formulae (NO3-, HNO3...); CAS numbers (7697-37-2, 10102-43-9...) or commonly used prefixes (non-, bio-, pro-...): i.e. anything connected to chemistry that may arise in a medical text.

The DTQ is not only a compendium of technical terms, as it also includes common lay words (e.g. like, make, promiscuous, blanket, small, large, soft, hard, strong...) that have a specific meaning and translation in the field of chemistry.

Another asset of the DTQ that makes it stand out from other existing dictionaries is that it alerts users about potential translation difficulties derived from false friends, calques, obsolete, ambiguous or incorrect terms, metonymy, ellipsis, etc.

For all the above-mentioned reasons, this terminology resource represents a hands-on tool that helps translators and writers to increase their accuracy and productivity when they work with texts containing chemical terminology (patents, scientific articles, technical documentation for the pharmaceutical sector, clinical trial protocols, informed consent forms, scientific marketing texts, etc.).

In its first edition (April 2024), the DTQ contains more than 4,000 headwords; almost 7,000 meanings; thousands of definitions, synonyms and cross-references; hundreds of formulae, symbols, abbreviations, acronyms and explanatory notes on recommended and ill-advised uses.

Most of its entries provide one single meaning (e.g., benzalkonium chloride), but others are multiple-meaning entries that list up to thirteen different connotations, such as level.

The content of the entries is concise and straightforward yet comprehensive. In order to to spot the most relevant information as quickly and efficiently as possible, the different fields of terminological interest have been marked with different colours.

Where appropriate, the following information is provided:

• Synonyms in English or Spanish

• Full or abbreviated forms of chemical formulae, symbols and CAS numbers

• Notes, considerations or explanations of possible translation difficulties that may be posed by misleading, ill-advised, obsolete, ambiguous or incorrect terms

Sometimes, the author proposes alternative wording for those terms whose coined or most frequent translation is considered incorrect or ambiguous, as is the case, for example, with some semantic calques (e.g., high-throughput screening, structure-based drug design...).

Keys to entry structure, abbreviations and typographic conventions

Below the search engine you will find a tab called ‘Keys’, where you will find the meaning of the abbreviations and typographic conventions (●, ►, → , [s.], ◘, etc.) used in the dictionary. This will help user to optimise the use of the dictionary entries and make the most of its thematic, linguistic and cultural content.

Help us improve

The DTQ’s author, like the rest of authors who publish their resources on Cosnautas, is one of the most authoritative voices in chemical translation, but that does not mean that she knows everything or that she has not made some unintentional mistakes.

Our authors are approachable and humble people who are eager to receive any kind of feedback, be it praise or criticism, that will allow them to further improve their resources.

That’s why we make it easy for Cosnautas’ users to contact the authors directly through the contact forms under the ’Help us improve’ tab, which can be found at the bottom of the screen.

The DTQ can be accessed from any browser connected to the Net. Its intuitive and optimised search engine comprises six different search filters:

• Basic search

The default filter allows users to find words or sequence of characters typed in the search box that can be found within the headword field. It will return entries whose headword consists of one single word, such as adenine, as well as those made up of more multiple words, such as active pharmaceutical ingredient.

There is no need to take into account capitalisation or special characters (accents, apostrophes, hyphens, etc.), or to use quotation marks to find multiple-word entries. As characters are typed in the search box, a display menu will suggest the first ten entries beginning with the sequence of characters entered (auto-complete). If the entry you wish you access is among those displayed, you may just click on it or select it with arrow keys without further typing.

The basic search is the only filter using the auto-complete display menu.

• Entry starting with
  

When applying this filter, the search engine returns the entry or the list of entries corresponding to single-word or compound headwords that begin with the word or sequence of characters typed in the search box: if you type the word drug or the letters dru, the search engine will return a list of entries whose headword begins with drug or with dru (drug class, drug discovery, drug kinetics...).

• Entry containing

This search function works in much the same way as the previous one. It returns the entry or the list of entries corresponding to single-word or compound headwords that contain anywhere within the headword the word or sequence of characters typed in the search box: if you type the word drug or the letters dru, the search engine will return a list of entries whose headword contains drug or dru (drug class, orthosteric drug, small molecule drug...).

• Spanish term

Although the DTQ is primarily intended for medical translators and writers whose target language is Spanish, this filter is also very useful for translating from Spanish into English: it searches words in fields of terminological interest that contain terms in Spanish or that are used in both languages (i.e., ‘Spanish equivalence’, ‘Spanish synonyms’, ‘Other translation possibilities’, ‘Chemical formula’, ‘Abbreviated chemical formula’, ‘CAS No.’ and ‘Symbol’.

If you enter the word ácido in the search box, the algorithm will return the entry or a list of entries that contain this word in one of the above-mentioned fields. If you enter more than one word (e.g., ácido graso), the search engine will display a list of entries containing the exact collocation or phrase, as if it had been typed enclosed in quotation marks (”ácido graso”).

• English term

This search criterion finds words in fields of terminological interest that contain terms in English or that can be used in both languages (i.e., ‘Headword’, ‘English synonyms’, ‘Cross-reference’, ‘Initialism, ‘Abbreviation’, ‘Chemical formula’, ‘Abbreviated chemical formula’, ‘CAS No.’ and ‘Symbol’.

If you type the word electron in the search box, the algorithm will return the entry or a list of entries containing this word in any of the above-mentioned fields. If you enter more than one word (e.g., electron acceptor), the search engine will display a list of entries containing the exact collocation or phrase, as if it had been typed enclosed in quotation marks (”electron acceptor”).

• Complete dictionary

When applying this filter, the algorithm will find, anywhere in the entry, the words searched for (i.e., in all the previously-mentioned fields, but also in ‘definition’ and ‘observaciones’. 

If you search the word reubicación, the entry or list of entries containing this word will be displayed: for example, in the field ‘definition’ of the first meaning of the entry 1,2-hydrogen shift.

If you enter more than one word (e.g., reubicación de un átomo), the search engine will display a list of entries containing this exact phrase anywhere in the entry, as if it had been typed enclosed in quotation marks (”reubicación de un átomo”).

Text highlighted in yellow

Whenever a search for a word or phrase returns a list of multiple hits, when you select the entry you want to look up, the word or phrase will be highlighted in yellow.

This highlighting feature also works if you click on a cross-reference link that redirects to a specific meaning within a multi-meaning entry.

• To Fernando A. Navarro, co-founder of Cosnautas and author of el Libro Rojo: for his faith in this project and his precious assistance with TshwaneLex, the lexicography software I use—commonly known as ‘Suano’.
• To Anna Prats, CEO of AulaSIC: for providing me with the opportunity to tutor chemistry translation modules at such a prestigious institution. In fact, much of the content of my work is inspired by the teaching materials I create and use in the classroom.
• To Jorge Esteban Casas, Cosnautas’ editor: for his excellent editorial advice and overall assistance with other crucial areas for the publication of this dictionary.
• To Constanza Cervino: editor, journalist, terminologist and translator, for creating the preliminary layout for this dictionary and for her invaluable support and help with Suano.
• Last but not least, to José Antonio de la Riva Fort, director of Cosnautas, for sponsoring the DTQ and for his many useful recommendations and contributions.

Without them, this work would have neither seen the light of day nor served the noble and necessary duty of breaking down language barriers to pass on medical knowledge.

Mar Jiménez Quesada holds a degree in Chemistry and an MSc in Organic Chemistry from the University of Barcelona, although she has been living in the UK since 2004. After a decade dedicated to pharmaceutical R&D in laboratories and research centres in Spain and the UK, Mar decided to hang up her lab coat to pursue her passion: biomedical translation. As a token of her commitment to her new career, Mar has attended dozens of biomedical translation courses and obtained relevant qualifications at various institutions, including the University of Westminster or AuslaSIC, where she currently tutors chemical translation modules. She is also the author of a number of blog articles on the subject of chemical translation and has edited over 1000 scientific papers published by prestigious international journals such as the Journal of Materials Chemistry, Chemical Communications, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics or the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.

In biomedical sciences, the most common citation styles are Vancouver and APA, but it could be that the institution for which you are writing your paper requires that you conform to the conventions of other style manuals (MLA, Chicago...). Either way, the authors of our resources suggest citing as follows: