SEOUL- Korea has ambition to become a major destination for medical tourism within the next five years. The government has been supporting the globalization of Korean medical institutions under a brand campaign “Medical Korea”, in an effort to promote its medical sector abroad. So far, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, total number of foreign patients who visited Korea for medical treatment surpassed 110,000 last year, up from 81,789 in 2010. If everything goes according to Korea’s ambitious development plans in this niche market, the country could attract over 150,000 foreign patients this year and target 400,000 visitors for medical purposes by 2018. By comparison, in 2007, less than 8,000 foreign travellers came to Korea for medical tourism.
The government has been making efforts over the past few years to develop medical tourism as one of its new growth engines. An agreement has been for example signed with health authorities in Abu Dhabi to allow citizens from the UAE to get treatment in four contracted local facilities in four hospitals located in Seoul. According to Korea’s Health Ministry, the agreement could generate economic benefits of US$ 52 million per year. Various programs have also been introduced by the government and related state agencies to facilitate the arrival of tourists for medical purposes. Initiatives include the issuance of medical treatment visas, operation of an around-the-clock medical call centre as well as dedicated one-stop medical tourism service centres. Special visa issuance has already helped to welcome in 2011 some 8,259 for countries such as Russia, China PRC as well as Mongolia. Russia is seen as one of the market with the highest potential. An office to promote Medical Tourism has recently been opened in Vladivostok in Siberia.
Speaking with the Korean daily “The Korea Times”, Korea Tourism Organization (KTO)’s chief Lee Charm sees medical tourism as the next big thing for the nation’s tourism industry. “The prospect for medical tourism is fantastic. The area of medical service has unlimited growth potential.” Lee said. The high level of services, the blend of traditional Korean medicines with Western medical knowledge as well as a safe and reliable environment is considered as assets to futher develop medical tourism. Korea medical services are also price competitive, especially when compared to Western European countries. “We are a bit more expensive than Thailand but our environment is much better and safer,” added Lee to the newspaper.
by Luc Citrinot
Read more: http://traveldailynews.asia/news/article/49911/korea-is-looking-to-become
The pending implementation of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, will not stop or even slow down the moving train that is medical travel and tourism, say experts in the field.
Just days before the Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling giving a thumbs-up to most of the Affordable Care Act, David Boucher, president of Companion Global Healthcare, commented that regardless of the court’s decision, the major factors driving medical tourism would continue.
“The escalating cost of (U.S.) medical care and the continued decline in quality is ensuring the future of medical travel,” Boucher said during a presentation at the recent Well-Being and Medical Travel Conference.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, Travel Market Report asked Boucher and other medical tourism experts for their perspectives on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on the future of medical travel.
If, as the Affordable Care Act promises, almost all Americans are covered by health insurance, will fewer people travel to save money on medical procedures?
Josef Woodman, publisher of Patients Beyond Borders medical travel guides: The answer is yes, no and neutral. On the one hand, those who are currently uninsured – a huge component of medical travel – will gain access to covered healthcare. Some may be able to stay in the U.S. for an orthopedic procedure that they were previously not insured for. Some of this will take away from medical travel.
On the other hand, you can’t have 30 million Americans (the currently uninsured who are expected to gain coverage) entering our already broken system without a tradeoff in the form of longer waits for specialty care.
If you look at Canada and the U.K., where there are long-established healthcare systems, this has been the case. So the people who can afford to travel for specialty care to places like the Cleveland Clinic or Sloane-Kettering will do so. Those who can’t will be stuck with long waits.
Boucher: Americans and Canadians will continue to travel abroad and domestically for healthcare, whether it’s to a Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins or other facility. They are looking for safety and service, which are both leading motivators to travel for healthcare. Price is only the third consideration.
Most employers indicate that they continue to be interested in the right services for their members at the right place and right price. If that means changing their benefit plans to cover travel to the Cleveland Clinic, they are increasingly open to it. Nothing in (the Affordable Care Act) will change this.
We will see more companies following in the path of Pepsico and Lowes in this regard.
(See story, PepsiCo Med Travel Benefit Expands Market for Agents, December 22, 2011
Kiana Bright, vice president, Thailand Medical Travel and Tourism: More Americans will travel overseas for healthcare. Accessibility of care will be a long-term problem if more people are brought into the healthcare system. Canada has universal healthcare and is a perfect example of this. Many Canadians have to wait up to seven months or more to receive knee replacement surgery.
In addition, the healthcare cost will be increased for employers. This will drive them to find creative options to save money. Medical tourism can be the answer for that.
Are there areas of medical tourism that will not be impacted by the Affordable Care Act?
Boucher: It should have no impact at all on dental coverage and therefore dental tourism. In fact, a lot of Americans are dropping their dental coverage. Even if you are covered, most dental premiums have a $1,500 or $2,000 a year maximum at best. So if you need $15,000 worth of dental work and you are only covered for $1,500, it still pays to travel for dental care.
Woodman: There is a vast landscape that will not change at all. Dentistry is not covered (under the Affordable Care Act), neither are cosmetic surgeries and some bariatric procedures. Dentistry and cosmetic surgery comprise over half of all medical travel – and if you add in elective surgery, that’s about 75%.
What other factors beyond cost and insurance coverage are driving the future of medical tourism?
Boucher: With the increasing shift toward greater transparency and consumer awareness, there will be an increase in Americans traveling for healthcare as they learn more about the high quality care available overseas.
There’s so much more information out there on the safety, quality and service provided by medical institutions. More consumers are sharing their experiences. It’s no longer just what the medical facility wants to tell us. People will increasingly be able to make educated decisions.
Woodman: Global options for healthcare will be something that more people are comfortable with. People are growing savvier about these options already – there are people who are getting off a cruise ship and getting an MRI while in port.
We haven’t yet reached a critical mass on healthcare transparency but it is coming. More patients will be rating their experiences online. It will be like hotels on TripAdvisor.
Hospitals are offering packages and special deals, but not enough yet and they are not posted on their websites. The next phase is to pry all this information loose and aggregate it. It will be easier to shop and compare.
The global potential for medical travel is huge – and increased global activity will lead to improvements in healthcare. There’s a huge growth of the middle class in other countries, which means more people can travel for healthcare. Hospitals will be forced to compete.
Read more: http://www.travelmarketreport.com/medical?articleID=7456&LP=1
TWIN FALLS, Idaho (AP) — Erica De La Rosa is in court nearly every day, but she never speaks for herself.
“We’re not supposed to exist,” she said.
De La Rosa is a court certified Spanish interpreter for Twin Falls County 5th District Court. Interpreters are not lawyers or advocates and don’t give legal advice or even explain to defendants possible outcomes in their case.
“You say what they say,” she said, no matter how shocking or strange it might be.
Idaho law requires that courts ensure access to all people, including those with limited English proficiency or those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. The courts meet these requirements by developing programs that improve the quality of interpretation and increase the number of qualified interpreters in the courts, according to the Idaho Supreme Court website.
Interpreters are under oath to completely and accurately translate what is said in court to the best of their ability, said Mary Jo Palma, the coordinator for translators in Twin Falls County, and a certified Spanish interpreter.
“If an interpreter becomes aware they’ve made a mistake they’re under obligation to correct it,” Palma said. “If an interpreter is challenged, the judge will rule accordingly.”
One case where an interpreter was questioned is currently making its way through court in Twin Falls County.
Valentin Calvillo was sentenced to serve 15 to 30 years in state prison in November 2011 after being convicted by a jury of eight counts of lewd conduct and sexual abuse of a minor in November 2010. His sentence was delayed for a year because Calvillo, 50, skipped his trial after showing up for the first few days.
When he returned, Calvillo petitioned for a new trial, arguing he misunderstood instructions from his defense counsel when he was told to leave and seek medical treatment. With a new attorney, Calvillo unsuccessfully argued for a new trial during the summer and fall of 2011.
Calvillo’s attorney, Virginia Bond, was in court again two week ago asking Judge Richard Bevan for an independent translator to go over transcripts from the case and look for errors in translation.
During one hearing, Calvillo’s family began gesturing to say there was a mistranslation about why Calvillo felt sick the day of the trial, Bond told the court.
Twin Falls County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Suzanne Craig said Calvillo claimed he didn’t feel good about being in front of a jury, not that he was actually ill.
Since Bond wasn’t the attorney during the hearing when the exchange occurred and doesn’t understand Spanish herself, she wanted someone else to listen to the audio recording of the hearing to see if the transcript matches up.
Bevan agreed to take the request under advisement and a new court date was set for Aug. 2.
When a translation is questioned, it can be a bit embarrassing, De La Rosa said.
“You just say, ‘excuse me your honor, the interpreter made a mistake,'” she said. “If it’s a simple mistake it’s not a big deal, but it’s humbling.”
Occasionally interpreters have to translate for someone in a language other than the one they know best. A person might speak a language that’s difficult to find an interpreter for, with Spanish being their second language and English their third.
The judge speaks in English, the interpreter translates to Spanish and the defendant must translate in their head to their own language and then the process starts again.
“It’s an art,” De La Rosa said.
In a 361-page joint filing late Friday Apple and Samsung laid out their respective objections to the opposing party’s preliminary jury instructions for the upcoming district court patent trial scheduled for the end of July.
The disputed proposed jury instructions cover a host of procedural necessities regarding juror handling and includes operating minutiae down to when an instruction can be given and how said instruction is phrased. Many objections are based on unnecessary verbiage or when an instruction should be given, though some call race into contention and illustrate the implications of trying an international patent case in the U.S.
Samsung is worried about how a jury may perceive a supporting witness’s ethnicity as seen in the South Korean company’s juror questionnaire and has extended that concern to jury instructions.
For example, Samsung disputes Apple’s proposed reading of the following when the first foreign speaker testifies:
Languages other than English may be used during this trial. One such language will be Korean.
The evidence to be considered by you is only that provided through the official court translators. Although some of you may know Korean, it is important that all jurors consider the same evidence. Therefore, you must accept the English translation. You must disregard any different meaning.
In objection, the Galaxy maker claims that the “proposal will disrupt the trial and unnecessarily call attention to the witness’ ethnicity.” The company is looking to remove any relation of ethnicity and expert testimony during the trial and wants to keep the issue of race out of the proceedings completely.
Samsung’s proposed instruction reads almost identically to Apple’s, though “Korean” has been removed from the leading sentence:
Languages other than English may be used during this trial.
Witnesses who do not speak English or are more proficient in another language testify through an official court interpreter. Although some of you may know, for example, Korean, it is important that all jurors consider the same evidence. Therefore, you must accept the interpreter’s translation of the witness’s testimony. You must disregard any different meaning.
At issue is the interpretation of testimony given by Korean-speaking experts by a Korean-speaking juror who may form a different translation than the one given by a court interpreter.
While most of the parties’ objections are par for the course, some call into question the interpretation of certain trade and patent laws which are instrumental in trying a case regarding such issues. An example is Samsung’s proposed design patent summary which states “[a] ‘design patent’ protects the way an article looks, but not the way it functions.” Apple takes issue with this statement, asserting that the “instruction is misleading because design patents protect articles of manufacture that have or serve a function, so long as the overall design of the article is not “dictated by function.” Similar objections are seen throughout the document.
Presiding Judge Lucy Koh will take the proposed instructions into consideration and may request an updated pared-down set this week. Another option would be to hold judgment until the pretrial conference scheduled in which case the parties would have to make dynamic adjustments during the trial.
The Apple v. Samsung jury trial is slated to begin with juror selection on July 30.
Despite an increasing number of Chinese people who are able to converse in English thanks to the nation’s growing exchanges with the world and the spread of higher education, professional translators and interpreters who can work with English and Chinese still fall short of demand.
The translation market in China was worth about 30 billion yuan ($4.72 billion) in 2008 and expected to grow at an annual rate of 30 percent, according to the Translators Association of China.
In order to satisfy market demand for high quality translators and fully develop the translation sector, Chinese educational authorities approved 40 leading universities to set up special training programs for professional translators in 2009.
However, only a small number of the graduates from these programs are now working as professional translators after finishing their two-year study despite holding a master’s degree in translation and interpretation, said Mu Lei, a senior professor at the School of Interpreting and Translation of Guangdong University of Foreign Studies. She was speaking at the China Translation Profession Forum in Beijing on Saturday.
Most of the graduates succeed in landing good jobs at government agencies and well-known multinationals thanks to their training as professional translators, Mu added.
Compared to student translators and interpreters from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, mainland Chinese students excel at language skills but lack interpersonal skills, which prevents them from becoming successful professional translators, according to Wang Lidi, dean of the Graduate School of Translation and Interpretation at Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU).
After decades of fast economic development, China is now stepping up its cultural exchanges with other countries, in the process of which translators have a crucial role to play, said Zhao Haiyun, head of the international division of the General Administration of Press and Publication.
Another side of the coin
Unlike in China, where a large number of people want to become translators and interpreters, most English-speaking countries and regions such as the EU have far fewer people willing to take part in translation training programs and even fewer ready to learn the extremely difficult language of Chinese.
Globally speaking, there are fewer than 10 qualified interpreters whose mother tongue is English and who can translate between English and Chinese, according to William White, an experienced freelance interpreter who used to work for the Delegation of the European Union to China.
White is now based in Beijing, and his daily fee has been increasing at an annual rate of about 10 percent in recent years thanks to the tight market. “In peak seasons like April and September, it’s really hard to find professional interpreters, as there are many international conferences and qualified interpreters are all occupied.”
By Caroline Tan, NBCLosAngeles.com
WALNUT, Calif. — For Walnut residents who do not speak English, participating in City Council meetings and addressing local officials may soon become more difficult.
Council members voted 5-0 this week to postpone a decision on a proposal that would ask non-English speakers to provide their own interpreters for all Council proceedings, which would be conducted only in English.
But the prospect of English-only public meetings remains a distinct possibility. A vote may happen later this month, when the council is scheduled to meet again on July 25
Though a formal decision has yet to be made, the proposed English-only policy has already raised concerns among some local residents, who fear the move would violate civil rights and unfairly disadvantage a portion of the population.
Nearly two-thirds of Walnut’s residents and three of the five council members are Asian.
The proposal comes at the helm of decades of similar policies targeting the growing immigrant population in nearby cities in the San Gabriel Valley, which has transitioned from a predominantly Caucasian collection of suburbs into a center of Asian culture in Southern California.
The English-only proposal was brought to the council by local resident Wendy Barend Toy, who said she could not understand several commenters who spoke Chinese when addressing the council.
On Wednesday, the council voted to seek federal review from the U.S. Department of Justice before making a decision on the proposal.
Daisy Duan, 27, a graduate student at the University of Southern California who speaks limited English, said in Chinese that the proposal would “definitely” affect her ability to participate in local politics.
“I feel like English is still very difficult,” Duan said. “I know many first-generation immigrants who, when they came to America, could not speak even a single word … It’s not fair.”
Duan added that she thinks the proposal is particularly problematic in California, which has a higher proportion of immigrants than any other state.
According to the 2010 U.S. Census, Asians represented nearly 64 percent of Walnut’s population. Whites accounted for about 24 percent, and blacks for nearly 3 percent, with the remaining residents from other races. Hispanics or Latinos of any race represented about 19 percent of the population.
Walnut Councilman Tom King said Friday that the city simply can not afford to hire an interpreter for every meeting. He supports the idea of English-only meetings but has reservations about specifics in the proposal.
King said it is uncommon for residents to address the council in a language other than English, so the demand for an interpreter does not justify the costs.
“It would be a financial restriction and waste of money,” King said.
He added that the last time a resident spoke to the council in a language other than English was when a Mandarin-speaking resident came to the podium in April.
Still, King said the council hopes to represent all voices and has considered alternative solutions.
“Nobody wants to disenfranchise anybody,” King said. “It’s just that our meetings are held in English, and we have someone record the meetings in English, and if they speak [a different language], their remarks are not understood.”
King said he has suggested that the Council create a “standby volunteer interpreter list” to provide language support.
But Sissy Trinh, an active member of local advocacy group Southeast Asian Community Alliance, said she has noticed that similar initiatives in other cities ended up as “abysmal” failures. Translation is a mentally exhausting activity and volunteer help can be unreliable, she added.
“You have to assume that people can take that time off and that they’re willing to,” Trinh said. “You don’t know what the quality [of translation] is, and I’ve heard of cases where people are brought in to translate and end up speaking the wrong dialect.”
Trinh added that she considered the proposal a “civil rights violation” that “definitely doesn’t build trust with government officials.”
But King said he was not worried about volunteer recruitment. There are many bilingual students in the region who are eager to give back to their community, he said.
Austin Yuan, 25, a first generation immigrant who is fluent in English, said he could understand the motives behind the proposal.
“As a citizen, you have to understand that perhaps it’s not just the responsibility of the government to just serve you,” Yuan said. “They have to look at everyone.”
Still, Yuan said he sympathized with citizens who do not speak English and feel they are being “cheated out of their tax money.”
The legal debate will likely come down to an “access issue” for those who do not speak English, according to Los Angeles-based civil rights attorney Lisa Maki.
She said it’s a complicated issue, but added that developing a volunteer interpreter datase will likely help the city of Walnut avoid legal problems.
The Council is expected to vote on the matter later this month, pending input from the U.S. Department of Justice on any civil rights or legal issues associated with the proposal.
Translator as a job – written by Jenny Park, PhD
I am a college Poli Sci professor and started translation as a side job because there was so much demand for my Korean to English translation. My first job was from Alabama Power Company who wanted me to translate a brochure from English into Korean. At that time I was a Professor of International Relations at Emory University, and they couldn’t find a Korean translator, so they asked Korean Community Center. I had signed up at the local Korean Community Center as volunteers to help Korean people who don’t speak English. The KCC contacted me to do the job, and I did it with pleasure in two hours. I was going to do it for free, but they paid me $80 an hour…this was about 27 years ago….
Then I went back to Korea, where I got married and stayed for 10 years as college professor. I volunteered to interprete Korean sermons to English for foreign visitors to Youido Full Gospel Church, the mega church with 500,000 members.
One day I interpeted for an American professor, and people started asking me for all kinds of translation and interpreting… newsletters, journals, speeches… I was writing speeches for Ministers of Korean government…
The university that I was teaching International Relations had about 40 foreign students, and the school asked me to simultaneously interpret Korean sermons into English every Thursday. And I enjoyed translation and interpretation so much that it became a full time job and my college teaching was like my side job in terms of the time I spent.
When I went back to the U.S. to raise my kids there, I became a State of California court certified interpreter and started my own school teaching translation and interpretation. My translation company was doing so well it was growing 50% every year even during economic recession. So I am a full time translator and interpreter now. How do I like my job as translator?
I love it. I think it is the best job that benefits from the most recent technological developments.
First, I enjoy the freedom it brings to my life. No pressure, no boss, no competitors, and financial stability.
Thanks to the technological development, I can sit in my most comfortable chair, watching my favorite show, and communicate with my employees and colleagues online. Microsoft Word is such a great tool, compared to when I first started translating. At first I wrote down on a paper, and typed on Smith Corona which made so much noise and hurt my fingers. Printing took such a long time all night, and I had to tear off those dotted sides as well as each page.
But now, we have Microsoft. We have laser printer. My project managers receive an assignment from Israel by email and click it off to my translator in Korea, and click off the translation to a proofreader in Germany. No shipping, no warehouse, no custom, no hassle like in other trading businesses. It takes much shorter time to do translation thanks to the help of many softwares such as Trados and Nuance pdf converter. Online dictionaries are great. And I love how much I learn about other fields, how my vocabulrary is increasing, and how fast and accurate I can get. Translation is so much fun like a puzzle game and brings pleasure to my heart.
You do what you like, and what you are good in. Isn’t that the greatest job? This is the greatest time in human history to be a translator.
Helpful tips in translating Korean to English
Translation is a field which seems to benefit the most from recent development in technology. Now you can translate 5 times faster than before when you didn’t have those technological benefits.
There is a degree of difficulty in Korean translation. Birth certificates are the easiest ones when you have a templet. It is good to have a templet for various kinds of certificates, basic relations, family relations, family registry, death certificates, etc. Then there are personal letters that are very easy. You can use “Windows speech recognition mode” and translate in very short time since it will type for you.
However “Windows speech recognition mode” is not very good for complicated details. It is rather annoying to be correcting so many mistakes that the machine made. And do not ever use a machine translation. It doesn’t work for Korean at the current state, and I don’t think it will ever work especially for anything more complex than a very simple sentences.
Dragon Naturally Speaking is a great tool when you translate a book or long documents. You can even lie down on your sofa, and read into a recorder. Then connect it to a computer and it types the content. But you have to do a lot of proofreading and correcting which could also be a bit annoying.
A large volume of work with repeated words and tables are also very easy when you use Trados. It automatically translates the repeated words. But it is not very effective for long and complicated sentences.
There are many ways to reduce time and increase effectiveness. One of it that I really like is Review>right click spelling and grammar>Customize Quick Access Tool Bar>Proofing>Auto correct options. Especially in natural science or engineering documents such as patents, there are not too many literary expressions, and the same words are repeated many times. I enter anything longer than 4 letters into 4 letters by typing the first 3 letters and the last 1. For example,
Structure -> stre
Development-> devt
International-> intl
Then when I type those four letters, Word automatically changes it to the original word. You can be twice or three times more productive using this method, especially for patents.
Many original documents these days come into the form of pdf. I use Nuance PDF professional converter to put text boxes and write directly on pdf. It is very convenient especially for legal exhibits when you are required to mirror image the original. It takes a little time to get used to it, but after a while, it is much better than writing on Word. Abbey Fine Reader is also good, but too complicated to manipulate sometimes.
It is helpful to have online dictionary on all the time on the screen, and my favorite Korean to English dictionary is naver.com. Naver is much better than Daum in terms of English dictionary. Usually when I look up some technical words on the net, they are not in any dictionary. Korean dictionary is so outdated it does not have translation for most of the words that I look up. Then search it in naver.com, and they give you currently used translations, especially in expert academic articles. Click open and they usually have at least the title translated. That’s where I get most of the terms that don’t appear in dictionaries. If you cannot find them even there, which rarely happens, then you are the first one to translate that word from Korean to English. Be the first one and take the liberty of using your imagination and creativity.
But the most important source of course is my memory and linguistic intuition which no machine could match up to. In order to optimize my brain condition, I usually watch Korean hallyu dramas from my most comfortable translation chair when I translate. It takes off the pressure of concentrating too much and lubricates the language part of the brain to make the translation flow naturally, and provides fun.
This must be the greatest time to be a translator. Translation is like a puzzle game, requiring concentration and detail orientation, and I enjoy it so much in my spare time. I just love how my speed and accuracy improve over time, along with vocabulary and expressions stored in my language bank. Then you also have access to rich information, not limited to your narrow major field. A translator is a great job!!
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