The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) has just published a translation memory (TM) containing topics on infectious diseases. The content was originally written in English and the CdT (EU Translation Centre) has translated it into the 23 official languages of the EU plus Icelandic and Norwegian.

It’s a small TM containing about 2500 translation units (depending on the language) and it’s in .tmx format. That makes it easy to import and use in any CAT tool; Paul Filkin has blogged about how to add it to a TM in Studio 2011, in case you’re not sure how to go about it. I’ve imported it into my EU medical TM and the whole process took less than 10 minutes.

Field values in Studio TMs

I thought it would be useful to add a field in my TM to identify where these new units have come from, so I opened my TM in the Translation Memory window in Studio and added a filter by clicking: Add filter>Add>[Field:] Created on>Greater than or equal to [I entered the date and time I added the .tmx]>OK>Perform Search. Then I saved the filter (click save filter).   You’ll see the asterisk beside the filter disappears after saving.

Then I went to File>Batch Edit>Filter [select your saved filter]>Add>Change Field Value. I selected a free-text field*, added “ECDC” as the value and clicked Finish. It’s always a good idea to make batch edit changes in a copy of your TM, as there’s no “undo” button if you go wrong.

* If you haven’t got a free-text field set up in your TM, close the TM in the TM window, go to the list of TMs in the left-hand column, right click the TM, select settings> fields and settings. Now add a name for your text field, pick text from the type column, and click OK. Re-open the TM in the TM window and run through the filter and batch edit instructions again.

What does the ECDC TM contain?

The TM has the multilingual content of the ECDC website. So it contains information about the transmission, incubation period, symptoms, treatment and vaccines for a multitude of infectious diseases, including:

• Antimicrobial resistance and healthcare-associated infections
• Emerging and vector-borne diseases (leishmaniasis, malaria, yellow fever, etc.)
• Food- and water-borne diseases and zoonoses (anthrax, cholera, E. coli, etc.)
• HIV, STI and other blood-borne diseases (hepatitis B and C, gonorrhoea, etc.)
• Respiratory tract infections (influenza A (H1N1), tuberculosis, etc.)
• Vaccine preventable diseases and invasive bacterial infections (diphtheria, rubella, tetanus, etc.)

The TM also contains a description of the organisation of the ECDC itself and some of its activities in:

• Surveillance
• Communicable disease threats reports (CDTR)
• Identification of emerging health threats
• Epidemic Intelligence Information System (EPIS)

Browsing the TM I’ve also found little snippets on health advocacy, biosafety, climate change and public health, antimicrobial resistance and health literacy. So all in all it looks like a useful addition to a medical translator’s resources.