Translating “medicalese”: The case of informed consent forms

Translating “medicalese”: The case of informed consent forms
Raluca Chereji
Medical Writing, March 2024; 33(1) pp 44–47
Abstract
Informed consent forms (ICFs) are documents used in clinical research to inform prospective participants about – and obtain their consent for – partaking in a clinical trial. Evidence suggests that ICFs may not be fit for purpose because their linguistic and textual features exceed the comprehensibility needs of their non-expert target audience. These issues also impact medical translators who translate ICFs for prospective participants of international trials. This article discusses some of the main challenges of translating ICFs, such as specialised terminology and jargon, lexico-syntactic complexity, and text length, and argues for increased training and collaboration to mitigate these difficulties in medical translation.