Last November, in a ceremony held at the Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain, in Madrid, the official presentation of the Pan-Hispanic Dictionary of Medical Terms (DPTM), sponsored by said Academy and the twelve American Academies, took place. Treatment. Medicine. In March of the same year, the IX International Congress of the Spanish Language (CILE) was held in Cádiz under the following programmatic titles: The Spanish language, mestizaje and interculturalism. History and future, The dictionary presented in Madrid, mentioned earlier, represents and represents the concrete materialization of what was said in the previous CILE of Cádiz, for the medical language in Spanish.
It is a work, based on the history of medicine and its lexicon, and conceived and projected for the future, to make the Spanish mixed medical language an agreed, enriched one by incorporating all the contributions made to medicine by the Spanish of the Americas. And makes. The dictionary, which contains more than 70,000 words, makes the Spanish language the only Western language that has, for all its speakers, a shared medical language; A common language capable of expressing, as I have said elsewhere, the pain that the disease represents and the hope that its cure or relief represents. The medical language presented by the dictionary through the free digital tool www.dptm.es shows and displays before our eyes the innumerable terms that explain medical science in our language, including the concepts and functions that make up it. Also included. It includes variants and typical usage, geographical distribution, etymology, international nomenclature, incorrect, ill-advised and colloquial expressions used in the pan-Hispanic region, and related equivalents in American English.
There are three obvious recipients of the use of DPTM. First, health professionals and patients; Secondly, the promotion and development of medical science itself and its language and thirdly, all professionals not directly associated with medicine and health who need to use medical language in the performance of their activity.
In the first case, DPTM is a fundamental instrument to promote scientific communication between professionals and between them and their patients, no matter where they come from. By reflecting language that simultaneously encompasses homogeneity and geographic diversity, it facilitates the patient’s interaction with the doctor, transforming our language in the field of medicine and health into one without borders. This is especially important where multiculturalism is high, as is the case in the United States or Spain, where the presence of Hispanic American doctors and patients is higher than usual. On the other hand, DPTM also contributes to giving patients a greater personal role by facilitating access to knowledge that is academically valid, useful for understanding their own illness and, therefore, for their way of living and feeling their illnesses. gives.
The purpose of DPTM is to collect terms that are included in the scientific heritage
The objective of the DPTM, in the second case, is also to collect words and concepts that are constantly included in the scientific and cultural heritage of our time, as is the case, for example, with the words related to COVID-19 in the dictionary that Just published. Introduce yourself. Likewise, and as new scientific terms emerge, the DPTM will always recommend an alternative in Spanish in cases where it exists and will pursue and promote the discovery of new terms in our language with the aim of not altering the Spanish language. Will give. In a scientific language. distorted
Use of medical language by journalists, translators, engineers, architects, publicists, teachers, etc. Third, it enhances the destiny and trajectory of DPTM and makes it expand to areas of development that we cannot even imagine.
Over the years, especially since in 2011 the Royal National Academy of Medicine of Spain agreed to promote the development of this dictionary, together with the Latin American Association of National Academies of Medicine, many academics, experts and collaborators have contributed their time. Philanthropy has, in our language, a task – the recently introduced DPTM – destined to render great services to our society, as long as, with generosity and audacity, we are able, together, to promote them .
If, as has often been said, there is no reality that has not previously been a dream, the DPTM that has just seen the light is, without a doubt, a dream reality of a medical language without limitations born in the service of Constitutes 6 billion humans who speak Spanish.
The dream achieved a few months after the horizon outlined by the CILE held in Cadiz has become reality, showing that the initiative to promote DPTM was right at the time and that its presentation, last November, was undoubtedly more than a mere coincidence. represents.
