Southwestern Medical Dictionary: Spanish/English, English/Spanish
by Margarita Artschwager Kay
Category: English language

Abstract: A bilingual dictionary of medical vocabulary, with translations from Spanish to English and vice versa, was prepared to meet the communication needs of Southwestern medical personnel and their patients. The dictionary is designed to help the Spanish-speaking patient describe his medical problem, and provides regional knowledge not easily accessible to the non-native health care worker. Terms of special ethnic significance and colloquial usage from the actual speech of the area have been selected. Included are 1200 separate entries in English and 1300 in Spanish arranged alphabetically and consisting of definition, part of speech, gender, equivalent medical term, sentence using the term, and sentence translation. Commonly used lay words from folk medicine were preferred to highly technical, scientific cognates which may not be understandable in either language.