Interview with Pablo Mugüerza, author of the mugüMED dictionary, a brandnew and modern bilingual medical dictionary

I had the pleasure to interview Pablo Mugüerza, medical doctor and medical translator English into Spanish. Pablo translates for the WHO and McGraw Hill, among others and is one of the foremost authorities on the translation of clinical trial protocols from English into Spanish, on which he has published a highly demanded manual (of which we have an exemplary in the eLoc Smart Solutions office!). Pablo is also a consultant for the terminology unit of the Spanish Royal National Academy of Medicine. You can find his detailed biography at the end of this interview.

In December 2024, Pablo published his own English/Spanish dictionary of medical terms (mugumed.com), a revolutionary, personal work with almost 10 000 terms as of February 2025. It is the first born-digital dictionary of its kind and the only one posted since the classic previous comparable work, now 25 years old.

The work behind mugüMED will be the topic of his session at the upcoming MedTranslate 2025 conference in Mulhouse, France and the topic of this interview.

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Q: Hola Pablo! Can you please briefly introduce yourself? 😊

A: ¡Hola, Anne! My name is Pablo Mugüerza and I am a translator and a physician, from which it can be deduced that I specialise in medical translation. I have been a medical translator and interpreter for more than 42 years and I have trained thousands of medical translation students all over the world in the last 15 years.

Could you share your background in both medicine and translation? How did your experience shape your approach to this dictionary?

I finished my medical studies in 1987 at the Complutense University of Madrid, but by then I had already been translating for the medical division of McGraw-Hill for two years. A few years later I was appointed director of the translation department of this medical division. In these more than 42 years as a translator and interpreter, I have attended courses, webinars, and congresses to complete my linguist background. During that time I have also collected all the occasions when what I found in conventional dictionaries did not work for me or did not satisfy me. A couple of years ago I thought I had the money and the time to organise this compilation. Let me say I was not completely right about those 2 assumptions.

What motivated you to create this medical dictionary, and how does it differ from existing resources in the field?

I was motivated, above all, to reorganise the information on medical terminology which, in my opinion, was poorly organised and scattered in the magnificent and indispensable conventional dictionaries. And also, as I have already said, to provide future translators with the result of my research when what I found in those dictionaries did not work in my translation. The revolutionary way of organising the information and the fact of giving priority to the ordinary medical translator are the 2 main differences with respect to existing resources.

What were the most challenging medical terms or concepts to translate between English and Spanish?

Almost every entry in my dictionary was a challenge at first. But, by way of example, I can point to the particular difficulty of translating severe (“intense” o “grave”, never “severo”, depending on the context) or run-in period (periodo postinclusión).

“AI is revolutionizing every single aspect of medicine right now, but that, whatever that is, will need to be translated. Just try with a complex couple of sentences about technical immunology, for instance: no machine will be able to translate that.”

How did you address regional variations in Spanish medical terminology across different Spanish-speaking countries?

With a few exceptions, I have not been able to address the regional variations of medical terminology in Spanish because it is a subject I have not mastered and, although it would have been easy to copy the compilations made by others, I have not done so, because in my frequent trips to other Spanish-speaking countries I have had the opportunity to see that they almost never correspond to the reality of the use of the language in those countries.

What innovative features or approaches does your dictionary include that aren’t found in traditional medical dictionaries?

I would mention three; a) the organisation of the information, which is not paternalistic, as has been the norm up to now, but assumes that the reader is an adult with a certain degree of linguistic training, who chooses how much information they need; b) my ideological, social and political point of view, which does not coincide practically at all with that of the authors of conventional dictionaries; c) the use of links to prestigious publications where terms are explained or images (static or animations) are shown that are key to understanding them.

Do you have a few examples of interesting cultural differences in how certain medical concepts are understood or expressed between English and Spanish-speaking contexts?

I can think of a very clear one:  in English, they talk about patients living with the chronic diseases they are suffering from: they say “a patient living with HIV (infection)”, for instance. However, in Spanish, you live with your family, with other people or with your pet, but not with your disease!

What changes have you observed in medical translation needs over your career?

Not much, in spite of the spectacular technical advances: medical translators and interpreters, who are all linguists, still need a strong medical background and medical sources to do this job. That still requires a specific specialization. Please note that I am always talking about fully-trained translators seeking to specialize in medical translation.

What feedback has surprised you most from users of your dictionary?

It was not a great surprise: users proposed new entries, spotted one typo (this far) or suggested fascinating considerations regarding terms. There have been lots of praises which make me flatter, which reinforce my mission to offer updated versions 3 o 4 times a year, always searching for excellence.

How do you keep the dictionary updated with emerging medical terminology?

I am an avid reader of medical information: I have subscriptions for Nature, Scientific American, The Lancet, The New England Journal of Medicine, and The New York Times (sciences), among others, and also to the newsletters of key pharmaceutical companies, CROs, institutions (NIH, RAE, RAMNE, etc.), and other medicine-related ones. Besides, due to personal and social reasons, I remain connected many hours a day and, during that time, I navigate through all kind of possible sources of emerging medical terminology. Terms enter by dozens every single day, and this trend seems unstoppable.

Are there plans for expansions of the dictionary, i.e. in other language pairs?

Absolutely not. I am not proficient in any other languages but English and Spanish, and I would not dare to pretend I am.

“In English, they talk about patients living with the chronic diseases they are suffering from: they say “a patient living with HIV (infection)”, for instance. However, in Spanish, you live with your family, with other people or with your pet, but not with your disease!”

What role do you think AI and language technologies will play in the future of medical translation?

An assistant: that’s the role they will play. But we need to learn how these new assistants work and be able to tell right from wrong (the assistants are not), which remains an exclusively human ability. AI is revolutionizing every single aspect of medicine right now, but that, whatever that is, will need to be translated. Just try with a complex couple of sentences about technical immunology, for instance: no machine will be able to translate that.   

What advice would you give to someone starting out in medical translation today?

Get your medical background asap! Specialize and ultraspecialize (better in “clinical trial protocols” than in “medical documents”, for instance) yourself, and learn and follow who are the leaders in your language pair so that you can learn from them in congresses, webinars, and workshops.

Thank you Pablo for your time and for this very interesting interview!

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Mugümed dictionary: mugumed.com
Pablo’s website: pablomuguerza.com

Pablo Mugüerza is a speaker at our upcoming MedTranslate 2025 international conference for medical translators, you can check out his session abstract “Writing a new bilingual medical dictionary: challenges, methods, and research” here.

About MedTranslate international medical translation conference: MedTranslate 2025 announcement

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About Pablo Mugüerza

Pablo Mugüerza is a Spanish medical translator EN>ES with more than 40 years of experience as a translator, both on-site (McGraw-Hill) and freelance (most of the time). He graduated in medicine in 1987 and since then has worked for the most important translation agencies in Spain and abroad, and for most of the major pharmaceutical companies and CROs. He is an external translator for the WHO in Geneva, Switzerland and an editor for the OPS.

He is one of the foremost authorities on the translation of EN>ES clinical trial protocols, on which he has published a highly demanded manual (the 2nd edition sold out in March 2018).

Since 2009 he has presented more than a hundred workshops, courses and conferences in both English and Spanish, in person and online, in many countries in Europe and in North and South America. Currently, in addition to his uninterrupted work as a translator and ENES reviewer for the world’s leading agencies and CROs, he is a consultant for the terminology unit of the Spanish Royal National Academy of Medicine and for Evidera (one of the world’s largest Health Marketing Research companies), a “trust miner” for the pioneering text mining company Exfluency, and a term validator for the Spanish Supercomputing Center and the CNIO (National center of cancer research.

In December 2024 he presented his own dictionary of translation EN>SPA of medical terms ( mugumed.com), a revolutionary, personal work with almost 10 000 terms in February 2025. It is the first born-digital dictionary of its kind and the only one posted since the classic previous comparable work, now 25 years old.