If like me, you are living in the US and working as a medical interpreter (or planning to become one), you are surrounded by the English language – and the endless opportunities to improve your knowledge of all things medicine through watching TV, reading books and listening to podcasts. – or picking up brochures on various diseases and procedures every time you are in a medical office. Indeed, when I first started preparing for my interpreter exam, I realized that, despite being a native speaker of Russian, it was my Russian language I needed to work on more. After all, my husband and I speak English at home, the majority of my friends are English speakers and my work at the time (teaching English) involved, as you can guess, mostly speaking English. So I set about improving my Russian – in particular, medical terminology and language for speaking about healthcare in general. I used a wide variety of resources to help me in this endeavor. For example, there are medical dialogues and bilingual patient handouts that you can use to build up your terminology and interpreting skills (check out this post on general healthcare resources and this one on interpreting for cancer care). But because I believe that stimulating input is a key factor in learning, I also leaned heavily on books and podcasts, which I read and listen to when waiting in between interpreting assignments, doing housework, walking my dog, hiking etc. In this post, I`ll share a list of Russian-language books about doctors and medicine. In the following posts, I`ll share some recommendations for Russian-language podcasts and some other healthcare-related resources.

Continue reading “Resources for Russian Medical Interpreters Part 1: Books” →