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MedLexic

English-French dictionary of medicine and related sciences

Eñaut Urrestarazu

Version 1.02; May 2024

An essential tool for any interpretation, translation and specialized writing professional in any health sciences field.

Over 90,000 duly documented lexicographic articles.

Useful information enabling an effective solution to terminology problems: equivalents, synonyms, abbreviations, collocations, idioms, anatomy terminology, recommended and unadvisable translations, calques or loan translations, usage examples, explanatory notes, and much more. 

Reliable and constantly updated source.

The author

My name is Eñaut Urrestarazu Aizpurua. Born and raised in Belgium, I’m Belgian on my mother’s side and Spanish Basque on my father’s side.  I graduated in 1997 from Mons-Hainaut University School of International Interpreters (in Belgium) as a Translator from Spanish, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian into French.

Though fully bilingual since I was a child, most of my studies were completed in Belgium, so I consider French to be my first language, therefore my target language.

I started off as a technical translator at Reinisch Spain, a German company headquartered in Vitoria that specialized in technical documents; back then it was the official and exclusive distributor of Trados® in the Iberian peninsula. In addition to translation, at Reinisch I was in charge of the technical assistance service, so I became the first Trados® accredited trainer in Spain, and I learned everything a translation professional would wish to learn; how to translate with and without CAT tools, revise and correct texts, create price quotes, use Windows, Mac, and Unix, do modeling with self-editing programs (DTP), manage Networks, and even repair computer equipment (hardware).  In 2002, following five years of incalculable learning at Reinisch, the time was ripe to move in a different direction and build my own translation agency, Igela Translations.   

Up until approximately 2010, over 95% of my workload comprised technical translation and correction assignments (automotive; agricultural and aeronautical equipment, etc.)  In the realm of health sciences, I only translated texts related to medical products, such as surgical scanners or instruments, because I didn’t dare translate pure and sheer medicine. My clients increasingly entrusted me with more medical translations and corrections, and less technical documents, and it gradually dawned on me that I was insufficiently trained. I spent too much time searching the Internet to solve translation problems, yet also doubting whether the sources were dependable and, ultimately, whether my own work was reliable.  Most of the content I found was translated from English, so how could I know if the translation was correct? The only reliable resources were prep books for the MIR exams in France (ECN, National Ranking Examinations for resident internal doctors.)

This feeling of frustration encouraged me to resume my studies. 

In the absence of specialized higher education programs for medical translation into French I toyed with the idea of studying medicine. Yet my entrepreneurial duties didn’t leave much time or flexibility to pursue it, so I took a Master's course in English-Spanish Medical Translation at AulaSIC where I was fortunate to learn from the most established and accredited medical translators, as Maria Paz Gomez Polledo, Pablo Mugüerza or Gonzalo Claros Díaz. 

The translation process taught during my undergraduate translation studies in Belgium was pretty unsatisfactory. Believe it or not, translation precision was not prioritized, and translation challenges such as polysemy, false friends or calques were not tackled in depth.

Everything I learned during those 15 months of the Master program at AulaSIC forced me to question and rethink my way of translating. This led to a short-lived existential crisis which I  overcame only to come back stronger, more prepared, clear-headed, and passionate toward my profession. 

Having pursued an English-Spanish Master course also allowed me to realize how very lucky medical language professionals were —and still are—to work with this language pair, because they have the essential Dictionary of Doubts and Difficulties of English Medical Translation by Fernando Navarro at their fingertips.


Reasons that led to creating this dictionary

My love for medicine

My love for medicine and as a result the first sprouts of MedLexic arise thanks to my mother, an emergency and resuscitation nurse, who unknowingly instilled in me an everlasting passion. My mother raised me on her own and having no one to leave me with while at work, I spent most of my early childhood afternoons at the hospital, her workplace. I was always surrounded by healthcare staff, white coats, stretchers, wheelchairs, and patients, so part of my imaginary world revolved around nurses, accidents, diagnoses, and treatments. I still vividly recall my mother’s detailed explanation about how a patient had to undergo a leg amputation for wearing overly tight pants.

Those were the years where I developed a passion for health sciences and its specialized language.

Though I would have liked to be a neurosurgeon —I wouldn’t have settled for any other specialty—, my mother couldn’t afford to allow me that much time to complete my studies. Given the dilemma of choosing between another shorter medical specialty or changing my professional direction, I temporarily decided to set aside medicine and devote myself to engineering and other languages.   

The Influence of Fernando Navarro's Libro Rojo

In 2008 I traveled to Argentina to meet part of my family.  While browsing through a university library in Rosario, my attention was drawn to a huge red book entitled: Dictionary of Doubts and Difficulties in English Medical Translation (2nd edition), or Libro Rojo as we admirers fondly call it.  It was love at first sight —which happened to me only once before with Blinkenberg et Høybye: dictionnaire danois-français—, so, needless to say, I bought it. It was so heavy that on my return trip to Europe I had to pay over 200 dollars for overweight luggage, yet the investment was worth it. Since then, it is my constant companion (now, of course, in the electronic version), even for translating into French! Can you imagine a translator having to resort to an English-Spanish dictionary to solve English-French translation hurdles?

The absence of English-French medical dictionaries

While taking my Medical Translation Master course I came to realize that English-French medical translators constantly stumbled on a still unresolved issue, the lack of terminology resources for medical language professionals working with the English-French pair.  Most existing medical dictionaries (Le Larousse médical, Dictionnaire illustré des termes de médecine de Garnier Delamare, Dictionnaire médical de Manuila, Dictionnaire de médecine de Flammarion, Le Nouveau dictionnaire médical de Elsevier-Masson, Dictionnaire de l’Académie française de médecine and Dictionnaire de l’Académie française de pharmacie) adopt a purely descriptive approach. And though some do pick up on English equivalents — not always reliable— they are intended for medical professionals (physicians, researchers, nurses, etc.), or for the population at large and not necessarily considering what a medical language professional needs.

The only two resources that may be of some relevance are the Dictionnaire anglais-français des sciences médicales et paramédicales by William J. Gladstone, and the Dictionnaire des difficultés du français médical by Serge Quérin.

The first, Gladstone's dictionary, no doubt is the best to date yet it presents some gaps. Besides not being comprehensive and being outdated, when dealing with polysemy it does not provide the appropriate context for the translator to choose between meanings, to mention an example.

The lexicographic article of the entry ‘enlargement’, for example, contains two different meanings: agrandissement and renflement. A series of collocations appear immediately under the equivalents, yet they do not explain to which meaning they refer.

At times, the data provided in the entries is incomplete. For instance, in the data box of the entry ‘drug’ only three equivalent nouns are suggested: médicament, drogue and produit. However, why wasn't the qualifying adjective of ‘drug’ (pharmaceutique) included, being one of the most frequently used meanings? Additionally, ‘drug’ also means principe actif; does this imply that principe actif, substance pharmaceutique and spécialité pharmaceutique are synonymous with médicament ?

In terms of the Dictionnaire des difficultés du français médical by Serge Quérin, it is an excellent piece contributing valuable ideas and solutions, especially when struggling against the unwarrantable English calques that swamp the French medical language. It is also undoubtedly intended for biomedical professionals and not medical language professionals. In most entries, for example, no mention is made of the English word giving rise to the calque it wishes to avoid.

Such resources demand very advanced medical knowledge and thus may be relevant to medical translators and writers who, like me, have ample experience, yet clearly do not suffice for less experienced professionals.

This type of information, conspicuous by its absence in the works of Gladstone and Quérin, is definitely provided by Fernando Navarro in Libro Rojo, and which I also include in MedLexic. The latter was conceived in hope of promoting autonomy in the medical language professional through the acquisition of cultural, thematic, and linguistic knowledge aimed at well-substantiated translation decision-making and seeing through accurate and warranted translation or writing assignments. 

Learning with the Medfres group

Four months before the onset of the pandemic, at Tremedica, Association of medical translators and related sciences, of which I am a member, someone suggested the creation of a French-Spanish medical dictionary.  French being my first language I thought it was a great opportunity to further network with my colleagues and contribute my share. Prior to starting our meetings, we received some tips and recommendations from Fernando Navarro and others on how to use the lexicography program TLex (TshwaneLex).  I immediately installed it and in a matter of weeks I had learned how to use it. 

Together with 30 colleagues we created the working group Medfres. At the onset we had weekly meetings, and everybody seemed very enthused and committed to the project. Several reasons led the majority of group members to drop out, except Ana Atienza, Esperanza Vinagre and Raquel Lázaro, who offered me their moral and practical support contributing their expertise and invaluable knowledge.  I extend my deepest gratitude and dedicate MedLexic to them.

Though the group Medfres was dissolved, I wasn’t willing to throw away all those hundreds of hours of work devoted to the project as well as all the learning acquired, so I decided to create a medical dictionary conceived to help all medical language professionals working with the English-French language pair: MedLexic.

Criteria for creation

My initial idea was simply to gather the main English-French medical dictionaries in a single electronic tool.  Little by little, and inspired by Fernando Navarro’s Libro Rojo, I ventured into a more comprehensive dictionary delving into specific terms or expressions which, like polysemous words, false friends or obvious, semantic or orthotypographical calques, pose terminology problems to the medical language professional.  Additionally, I decided to include words taken from the general language; though not belonging per se to medical terminology they can also help enhance consistency thus avoiding the unnecessary yet too frequently used loan translations from English such as challenge, cast, adequate, etc.  I even thought of translating the Libro Rojo, as was done with the Dictionary of Doubts and Difficulties of English-Portuguese Medical Translation (DDD), but I finally dismissed the idea for two reasons. Firstly, translating a dictionary of the magnitude of the Libro Rojo is a monumental task that would take years to accomplish, and secondly, I disagree with some of the criteria applied by Fernando Navarro, which I believe slow down the translator's work.  Despite enjoying and learning a lot from each lexicographic data box in the Libro Rojo —I must say I’ve read the printed version from start to finish—, speed and effectiveness are paramount to the professional translator, so the sizable amount of information contained in each data box turns out to be challenging when trying to find the accurate desired meaning, synonym or disused term.

Consequently, I chose to sacrifice some part of knowledge in furtherance of productivity. Along those same lines, I thought it relevant to present the data boxes more intuitively, organizing them by color and highlighting key data in bold type (equivalents, collocations, synonyms, calques, and unadvisable translations, etc.).

Entry structure

Most of the lexicographic articles in MedLexic are monosemic entries providing one or two equivalents, like ‘gastritis’, in French gastrite

Data boxes of polysemous entries follow a much more elaborate structure where the context of the different meanings is also provided; they point out recommended or unadvisable translations, examples of usage are cited, or cross-references to related entries, or useful observations of a translation or thematic nature are included. 

The following data box shows:

  • different meanings are numbered, followed by the grammatical category of each word  (noun, adjective or verb) between blue-colored square brackets;
  • the abbreviation of the medical specialty relative to the word (Gral.[general], Hém. [hematology], Instrum. [instruments], etc.);
  • elements that enable finding the sense of each meaning (e.g., [falsify], [treat], [act as a doctor], etc.);
  • equivalents in French: in bold letters, to be readily available and easily visible without having to read the rest of the information in the data box;
  • collocations, (e.g., falsifier des épreuves o pratiquer la médecine): marked in red color and introduced by the symbol ■ followed by suitable equivalents or cross-references;
  • a grey-colored inset containing helpful observations for the user like warnings on possible complex translations. 


The search engine

MedLexic can be accessed from any browser, and its search engine is similar to that of the Libro Rojo. Noted for its intuitive operability enabling users to quickly identify the most accurate translations.  Though a bilingual English-French unidirectional dictionary, it has been optimized to search not only for words in English but also in French, which are part of the entry or found in other fields of interest within the lexicographic article, such as the following:

  • Abbrev.: field indicating the abridged form of an entry (e.g., FDA);
  • AbbrevOf: field showing the spelled out version of the abbreviated entry (e.g., Food and Drug Administration);
  • AlternativeSpelling: field that shows an alternative spelling to the main entry (e.g., post-operative, postoperative, esophagus, oesophagus);
  • TA (anatomical terminology): shows the Latin term for an anatomical structure (e.g., articular muscle of knee, musculus articularis genus);
  • plural: warns about the intricate spelling of irregular plurals in English (e.g., bacterium, bacteria, diagnosis, diagnoses).