Cosnautas, the go-to platform for Spanish-English medical translators, celebrated its second anniversary in July with an updated version of the Libro rojo and a new bilingual interface.

Libro rojo

The updates in version 3.05 are twofold.

First, the author, Fernando Navarro, has modified some of the Libro rojo’s existing entries by commenting on the latest changes in the Diccionario de la lengua española, 23^rd edition. These changes relate to spelling variants and fine-tuning of meanings.

Second, the Libro rojo continues to grow. New terms, such as ‘bedblocker’, ‘sleeve gastrectomy’ and ‘zygomycosis’, bring the total number of entries to an impressive 50,480. For more details, see Fernando’s article in the Cosnautas Blog.

Bilingual interface

Naturally, the resources that make up Cosnautas have always been in Spanish and English; this is the very essence of the platform. However, until now, the online interface has only been available in Spanish.

I was delighted to be asked to translate the platform contents into English a few months ago. Initially, I thought it sounded like quite a small project – a few software strings to perform searches, some paragraphs in the ‘Home’ and ‘About us’ tabs and a selection of FAQs. Not so. Have you ever taken the time to read the preface to the Libro rojo? Do you know what criteria Juan Manuel Igea Aznar followed to write his Alergología e inmunología dictionary? Under the hood, Cosnautas has extensive and fascinating content.

As a translator, I enjoyed this project. A mixture of techie challenges (HTML files and Excel strings), interesting subject matter (the ethos of medical translation), well-written source texts, responsive authors at hand to answer my questions, and, of course, a number of translation challenges. Should I translate the title, Libro rojo?  Should I follow the metalinguistic convention of using italics for foreign words? What about the italicised English words in the source? Does Laura Munoa compile or curate the Árbol de Cos? Can I use ‘repertoire’ in this context in English? I look forward to hearing what you think of my solutions in the comments below.

Some minor tweaking is still needed – the tab next to Contact still says Ayuda – but the English version is now up and running. If you’re more comfortable browsing in English, welcome aboard the bilingual Cosnautas platform!