Medical Terms In Thai

[The Dan Sai Kid]

Me and the Dan Sai Wife are living in Scotland now and we are getting ready to have a baby.

We have our first midwife visit tomorrow and we are going over different medical words in the birthing plan. I just failed spectacularly to explain epilepsy and wondered if there were any sites, or books, that could be recommended for this sort of thing.

Some are in a normal dictionary, but not all, so over to you guys.

I'm thinking that my best option is tracking down a learners medical dictionary, but any suggestions would be welcome.

Cheers!

[meadish_sweetball]

'rok[LF] lom[sM] ba[LF] mu[LR]' is 'epilepsy' according to my Medical Sciences dictionary.

As always, start with the easiest way: try the online dictionaries in www.thai2english.com and www.thai-language.com as they should have the most common maladies anyway.

LF Long vowel, falling tone

SM Short vowel, mid tone

LR Long vowel, rising tone

[The Dan Sai Kid]

I've been trying to get a translation for spina bifida. This is hard. I guess the best thing to do is find clear descriptions in English...

[meadish_sweetball]

spina bifida has no translation in my English-Thai medical dictionary, only an explanation of the condition in Thai. I have to confess I had to look it up as well as I had no idea what it was until now.

Here's the explanation rendered phonetically (no Thai script available).

khwam bok phrong tae kamnoed thi phanang lam kraduk san lang pit mai sanit sueng yuea hum khai san lang pon ok

If somebody can render that back into Thai script it might work as an explanation.

[Farma]

This may partly explain why it’s difficult to find translations.

The wife receives and writes a lot of reports on Thai hospitals and I notice English words written in the middle of the Thai script in most of the reports I’ve seen her receive or write.

You may find there is no Thai word equivalent for some of these medical conditions.

[The Dan Sai Kid]

So, any ideas of a book I can get on-line that might, at least, have any Thai descriptions.

Thanks

[Farma]

The university bookshops and amazon online sales offer Thai-English Medical Sciences Dictionaries if that helps.

[The Dan Sai Kid]

i looked at the amazon site in a few countries and it's sold out everywhere...

[g00dgirl]

The university bookshops and amazon online sales offer Thai-English Medical Sciences Dictionaries if that helps.

I also can't find a Thai English medical dictionary on amazon, if you find a link, please let me know, I have a list of medical terms I need translated as well.

[DavidHouston]

I see that the Royal Institute had a dictionary of medical terms English-Thai / Thai-English for only 250 baht. Whether this volume can still be found in bookstores is another question. This book is apparently offered for sale at http://toptextbook.tarad.com/product.detail_38168_th_539244 If you cannot find a new version, perhaps stores selling used books will carry this text.

ชื่อ ศัพท์แพทยศาสตร์ อังกฤษ-ไทย(หนังสือหมด) โดย กองวิทยาศาสตร์ ราคา 250 บาท ครั้งที่พิมพ์ 3 พิมพ์เมื่อ พ.ศ. 0000 จำนวนหน้า 1336

หนังสือที่รวบรวมศัพท์แพทยศาสตร์จากภาษาอังกฤษ มาบัญญัติศัพท์เป็นภาษาไทย เรียงตามลำดับอักษร A-Z ท้ายเล่มมีคำเทียบไทย-อังกฤษ เพื่ออำนวยความสะดวกในการค้นหาคำ นอกจากนี้ยังได้รวบรวมรากศัพท์ภาษากรีกและละติน พร้อมทั้งคำแปลภาษาไทยและตัวอย่างคำไว้ด้วย

(หนังสือขนาด ๑๕ x ๒๑.๕ ซม. หนา ๑,๓๓๖ หน้า)

Edited July 23, 2008 by DavidHouston

[Farma]

The Chulalongkorn university bookshop near the hard rock café in Bangkok has a good selection of books.

The medical sciences section is toward the rear right corner of the bookshop. I found the prices reasonable for books I’ve purchased.

Take a look through their University library website http://library.car.chula.ac.th/

One book listed is พจนานุกรมวิทยาศาสตร์การแพทย์ อังกฤษ-ญี่ปุ่น-ไทย = Medical dictionary English-Japanese-Thai / แต่งและ ISBN 9742464561

I hope this helps in some way

[g00dgirl]

Thank you,

I will try the one you suggested DavidHouston. Much cheaper to order from there than from overseas and their site works well with the language set to English.

[Rikker]

There's a trick for things like this--search the English phrase along with the word ที่ (which is bound to appear on virtually every page with Thai text on the internet).

This will lead you to pages which discuss the disease in Thai. And while no translation is readily apparent, there's plenty of discussion, including explanations of the disease in Thai.

[Edit: Also, the Thai Wikipedia page on the spine has a section on diseases, including a lengthy paragraph about spina bifida. It transcribes the name as "สไปนา ไบฟิดา".]

Edited July 23, 2008 by Rikker

[g00dgirl]

Rikker,

the Thai Wiki is actually very useful!

An example, I was trying to translate "anterior fontanelle" and "posterior fontanelle" as well as many other special obstetric terms.

I can find things like that by just typing the English word into the Thai Wiki search field, example result:

http://th.wikipedia.org/wiki/กระหม่อมหน้า

Edited July 23, 2008 by g00dgirl

[Rikker]

Yeah, Thai Wikipedia gets better and better. It's approaching 40,000 articles, which pales in comparison to English's 2.5 million, Japanese's 500,000, or even Indonesian's 86,000. But it'll keep growing.

One useful thing Wikipedia does is give links to the equivalent article in other languages on the lower left-hand side the page. So you can also try looking something up in English Wikipedia, then seeing if there's a link to ไทย available (in case the Thai article doesn't contain the English phrase).