A Self-reflection On Using Colina’s TQA Tool As A Guide For Medical Translation

This report is written as a self-reflection on how to use Colina’s translation quality assessment(TQA)tool,which has been developed to evaluate the quality of translations of medical texts,as a guide for a translation project commissioned by Zhejiang Zhenyuan Pharmaceutical Co.,Ltd.,which involves the translation of two medical texts from English to Chinese.After a brief overview of TQA research and a discussion of Colina’s TQA tool and its strengths,this report explains how the author of this report has used the most important quality criteria presented by Colina to steer her through pre-translation preparation(collecting and consulting parallel texts and consulting specialized dictionaries and online medical resources to compile bilingual glossaries),translation,and self-checking.Being developed by Colina to help determine a medical translator’s target language performance(i.e.standards of adequacy and appropriateness)and his or her reproduction of specialized content and terminology(i.e.accurate and appropriate rendering of medical terms,which demonstrates mastery of subject-specific and project-specific terms and content),these quality criteria have been proven to be effective and useful.This report also summarizes what has been learned during the duration of the abovementioned project,which will have a bearing on the author of this report’s future career planning.