Things They Should Invent: medical symptom word bank (for patients)

When trying to explain the value of using target language native speaker translators, or of having translation services available even to people who can function on an everyday basis in the target language, I often ask people to think of the last time they experienced medical symptoms that confused or frightened them - didn't know WTF was going on, couldn't google up a cause - and then describe these symptoms in a language other than their mother tongue. Try it, I'll wait. See? You lose nuance and feel less in control of what you're saying, and this is exacerbated when you're confused or frightened or in pain.

One of my favourite reference tools from back in the days when I did more medical translation is this sort of a cheat sheet for student clinicians in psychology. It's like a massive multiple choice test of all the things they need to be diagnosing, listing each factor/indicator, and then the adjectives that can be used to describe that factor/indicator. So mood can be euthymic, affect can be labile, etc. I did rather extensive research when I first started doing this so I am familiar with the concepts, but the vocabulary isn't always right on the tip of my tongue. I read the source text, I grok exactly what they're saying, I know there's a nice psychy word for it, but it isn't coming to me. I do have the tools and skills to look up each term individually, but it's much faster and easier to just scan my cheat sheet and suddenly "Echolalia! That's it!"

I'm thinking a similar tool could be very useful to patients whose first language isn't English (or even to children who don't know what kind of answers the doctor wants). Just a list of words that might be useful, grouped by category. Pain can be: dull, throbbing, burning, excruciating. A wound can be: open, scabbed, weeping, festering, bleeding. The vocabulary would have to be more everyday than my cheat sheet ("How are you today?" "Euthymic, yourself?"), but it would still be a huge help.

You know how it's easy to read in other languages, but really hard to talk at the level you can read at? Like (assuming you're an Anglophone) even if you don't think you speak French, you could totally figure out how to, say, buy tickets on the Juste pour rire website. But even if you do think you speak French, you couldn't get up on the stage and actually perform stand-up in French (unless you're Eddie Izzard, but we already know he's a looney.)

With this word bank tool, coming up with le mot juste to describe pain or symptoms or bodily fluids would be as easy as reading. It would be like skimming the Juste pour rire website, looking for tickets, and thinking "Hmmm, the word for "ticket" is billet so Billetterie looks like a promising link" rather than having to come up with the word billetterie all on your own. Patients could describe their symptoms in a more precise and nuanced fashion plus have a better idea of what sorts of things the doctors want them to tell them about, doctors could give them better care, and all it would take is an hour of brainstorming and a few photocopies.