This book is based on the previous, more internationally oriented (2013) version and is intended mainly for interpreters working between the English and Chinese lan guages. English-Chinese glossaries have been added to chapters and terminology has been localized to align with usage in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. The chapter on medical terminology touches on traditional Chinese medical terms, which are very easy to understand for native speakers of Chinese. This chapter will explain the Latin and Greek roots which make up the majority of medical terms in English, since even native speakers of English may find these difficult to understand. First and foremost, this book is meant to be a guide for all those who are working or wishing to work as interpreters or translators in healthcare settings but who have not had any formal training as health professionals. Healthcare interpreter trainers may also find this book useful as a course text for programs aimed at preparing inter preters for work in the healthcare setting. There is no point in simply learning medi cal terminology lists or surfing the internet without a good basic understanding of health and healthcare. The workings of the body are very complicated but will be explained only in very broad terms in relevant chapters, so as to enable the inter preter to have a good general understanding of what doctors and other health pro fessionals are talking about when they explain a patient’s condition to the patient or the patient’s family. This publication is intended to give healthcare interpreters who do not have a professional healthcare background some very basic insights into the health system, as well as anatomy, physiology and common disorders. The field of medicine is ever evolving: researchers keep unpeeling more and more layers of previ ously unknown details, however the aim of this book is, first and foremost, to enable healthcare interpreters to do their job with a better knowledge of the subject area. Secondly, the book aims to provide interpreters with a good basis for ongoing self- and professional development. For this reason, language has been kept fairly plain throughout the book and information has been restricted to main points, to avoid losing readers in a jungle of details. The blueprint for this book was based on feedback from students in one of the lead author’s healthcare interpreting courses. Students said they wanted a three-part book that would firstly give a brief introduction to health interpreting, followed by an overview of various settings and finishing with a number of chapters dedicated to medical specialties. They wanted the overview of the various settings to incorpo- rate questions commonly asked by health professionals. Students requested that the final part of the book be organized by medical specialty. Students asked that each chapter in the final part be named by specialty (e.g. Orthopedics) and organized so as to optimize preparation for assignments. Accordingly, each chapter in Part III of this book will start with an overview of anatomy and physiology of a particular body system. This will be followed by a brief look at the Latin and Greek roots which are the building blocks of much of the terminology to do with particular body systems. Healthcare interpreters will be able to go to relevant chapters prior to an interpreting assignment to re-familiarize themselves with anatomy, physiology, Latin and Greek roots and most common conditions, tests and treatment options. This work will be equally useful to medical translators, since both interpreters and translators need to be thoroughly familiar with a setting in order to ‘interpret’ it. Translators working on medical reports will be able to find commonly used abbrevia tions. Translators who have been asked to translate health information material into community languages will be able to gain a good basic overview of related background information. Court interpreters, who often have to interpret evidence of medical doc tors testifying as expert witnesses or to sight-translate medical reports in court cases such as wounding or murder, will find this book extremely useful as well. This book will not discuss general aspects of interpreting or translation in great detail. Interested readers are referred to the excellent publications by Scimone & Ginori (1995); Pöchhacker & Shlesinger (2007); Gile (1995); Gentile, Ozolins and Vasalikakos (1996), and Hale (2004, 2007) for thorough studies on the main issues in community and legal interpreting and the need for pre-service training (Hale 2007). Pöchhacker & Shlesinger (2007) address discourse in healthcare interpreting, while issues in healthcare interpreting settings across countries are discussed in Valero-Garcés & Martin (2008). Care has been taken to provide information which may prove useful to inter- preters working between the English and Chinese languages in a range of countries. Those interpreting for new immigrants or refugees are referred to the excellent work on specific health risks in different regions of the world by Walker & Barnett (2007) and on traditional cultural values and cross-cultural communication by Jackson (2006), Camplin-Welch (2007) and particularly Holmes (2013). The authors are under no illusion that this book will be so comprehensive as to cover the entire range of areas interpreters may come across when working in health- care settings. With the continuing developments in the fields of technology, biophysics, biochemistry and integrative medicine, healthcare delivery will see the introduction of ever changing procedures, tests, and approaches to treatment. There is no doubt that publications like the current one will need to be updated fairly regularly to keep abreast of new procedures and changes in the use of terminology. The authors also wish to stress that the present publication contains some anec- dotal evidence relating to ethical conflicts in healthcare settings. Such anecdotes were commonly shared by experienced interpreters who wished to remain anonymous. US spelling has been followed throughout. This means that words originating from the Greek words containing ‘αι’, which are spelled with ‘ae’ in the UK tradition, have been spelled with ‘e’ instead. Where possible alternative spellings have been included in the index because these may come up in reference works. The authors have attempted to avoid jargon. As an example, the term diagnostic studies has been used throughout rather than the word workup, and, similarly, the term ‘blood tests’ has been used rather than blood work.
