SNOMED CT makes a conceptual difference between:
- 267045008 Gastrointestinal symptom (finding)
- 308925008 Digestive symptom (finding)
Both are descendants of 386617003 |Digestive system finding (finding)| but with different finding sites: ‘digestive system’ and ‘gastrointestinal system’. In the body structure hierarchy, gastrointestinal system is a descendant of digestive system.
Czech anatomical nomenclature considers Gastrointestinal system and Digestive system as synonyms. In the Czech healthcare environment, two different concepts for the same clinical condition (symptoms of the digestive system) could cause confusion.
What should the translator do?
The translator should report to the project manager.
Which translation strategies could be adopted?
Strategy | Detail |
3. Selective Translation | A possible strategy would be to select only one concept for the national reference set, i.e. digestive symptoms (the broader concept) and translate only this one. |
4. Term-based Translation | Translate the elements of the concept FSN into the target language: For 267045008 |Gastrointestinal symptom (finding)| a translation would render the adjective gastrointenstinal and the noun symptom in the target language. Another possibility is translating slightly different syntactical variant symptom of gastrointestinal tract. Similarly, the same strategy could be adapted to 386617003 |Digestive system finding (finding)|, translating digestive and system into the target language. |
Proposal/Outcome
In the Czech Republic, strategy 1 was chosen as it was most suitable for the needs of the national healthcare service.
In Norway, such cases were most often met with strategy 2 in order to populate the hierarchy in a way provide a saturated ontology