Medical Translation Services

Translating medical records into English and out of it

The work runs in two directions, and they need different translators. Coming into English: hospital notes from Poland for a GP in Leeds picking up a patient's care, treatment records from Pakistan for an immigration tribunal, a specialist's report from Romania supporting an insurance claim. A native English speaker who reads the source language handles these. Document types and certification are covered on our medical document translation page.

Going out of English: an NHS clinic letter into Urdu, discharge advice into Arabic, a research consent form into Portuguese. Those go to native speakers of the target language, because a patient should never have to decode their own care instructions. It is the same native-into-target principle that runs through all our translation services; it just matters more when the text is clinical.

Formats are rarely tidy. Scanned records, faxed referral letters, handwritten entries in older notes, a phone photo of a vaccination card. As long as every word is legible we can work with it, and where a word genuinely isn't, we flag it rather than guess.

Medical report translation for legal and insurance use

A good share of the medical documents we handle are heading for a courtroom or a claims file rather than a clinic. A personal injury claim after a road accident abroad, where the treatment records are in Polish. A clinical negligence file with expert reports on both sides. An immigration appeal where the tribunal needs to see evidence of a medical condition. This material reaches us week in, week out from solicitors, Duncan Lewis Solicitors among them.

Medico-legal work usually needs a certified translation: the document plus a signed statement of accuracy, in a format accepted by HM Courts & Tribunals Service, the Home Office and UKVI. There is more on court-bound material on our legal translation services page. For documents going abroad we prepare the certified translation in the form a notary needs; see our notarised translation page. We accept Legal Aid Agency rates for eligible matters, and business or insurance paperwork that sits around the medical file, correspondence, policies, statements, is covered by our wider document translation service.

Patient information translation for NHS trusts

NHS trusts use us to put patient-facing material into community languages: information leaflets, appointment and clinic letters, discharge advice, public health campaigns. This is a different discipline from record translation. A discharge summary is written for a clinician; a leaflet about a colonoscopy is written for a nervous patient reading it at the kitchen table. The translation has to keep the reassuring, plain register of the English, not turn it into a textbook.

So the translator writes for the reader, and the second linguist reads it back as a patient would. A diabetes clinic letter going into Polish gets the same treatment as anything on our Polish translation services page: native translator first, independent review second. Local authorities use the same service for health advice aimed at the communities they serve.

One boundary worth stating plainly: this page is about written material. Spoken support at the appointment itself, face-to-face or by telephone, is interpreting, and NHS interpreting appointments live on our healthcare sector page.

What to look for in a medical translator

Fluency is the entry requirement, not the qualification. The real test is whether the translator recognises what they are looking at. "PRN", "bd" and "NAD" mean nothing to a general linguist; a medical one reads them as naturally as any clinician. Anatomical terms have false friends between languages. Reference ranges and units shift between health systems, and a value that looks alarming in one convention is normal in another.

Drug names are the classic trap. A medicine sold under one brand in Warsaw carries a different brand in the UK, and carrying the foreign name across unchanged leaves a GP staring at a drug they cannot identify. The safe route is the international non-proprietary name, with the original in brackets where it helps. These are exactly the details our second-linguist review exists to catch: every medical document is translated by a qualified native speaker with medical subject experience, drawn from a pool of more than 20,000 vetted linguists, then read against the source by a second linguist checking terminology, dosages and abbreviations as well as meaning.

That pool covers all 300+ languages we work in, including the rare ones where finding one qualified medical translator is hard and finding two, for the review, is harder still.

How much does medical translation cost in the UK?

Medical work sits in the specialist band: as a guide, £0.12 to £0.18 per source word, against £0.09 to £0.14 for standard business content. Rare languages and specialist material run from £0.15 to £0.22+ per word, urgent and same-day delivery adds a premium subject to capacity, and short certified documents such as a vaccination record are priced per page, £35 to £60, so you know the cost before you commit. Full ranges and what moves the price are on our pricing page.

Public sector arrangements are already in place. We supply NHS trusts at applicable framework rates and accept Legal Aid Agency rates for eligible legal matters, with the PO references and audit trail that public sector instruction requires. For everything else, the quote itself is free, fixed and back with you within one working hour during office hours.

Confidentiality: UK GDPR and medical records

Medical documents are about as sensitive as paperwork gets, and we handle them accordingly. Our processing is UK GDPR compliant, files are shared only with the linguists working on your job, and we will sign a non-disclosure agreement where your organisation requires one. Nothing about that is a special arrangement; records, clinic letters and medico-legal reports are our everyday material, managed from our head office in Warrington.

Need an interpreter at the appointment instead?

Translation is written; interpreting is spoken. If a patient needs live language support at a GP appointment, an outpatient clinic or a hospital consultation, start with our healthcare sector page. For individual languages, pages such as Urdu medical interpreter cover what to expect at the appointment itself.