All men by nature desire knowledge, and that is what they have laid upon us.
Aristotle

For the second year in a row, Ocean Translations S.R.L. offered a world-class training opportunity with their II Scientific and Professional Symposium on Medical Translation. The event took place on March 27th and 28th, and in this occasion was of a particular importance as a collaborative effort with Tremédica. This fact transformed it into the I Latin- American Scientific and Professional Symposium on Medical Translation, extending its impact virtually to all medical translators in the world.

The symposium was held in the city of Rosario, Argentina, and the attendants came from the whole country, mainly Jujuy, Neuquén, Buenos Aires and Córdoba among other neighboring provinces, as well as from Brazil and the United States.

Tremédica’s founding members Gustavo Silva, MD, from the Pan-American Health Organization, and Cristina Márquez Arroyo, a freelance technical-scientific translator from New York, generously shared their knowledge on their own areas of expertise with the audience. In this enriching learning experience for the medical translation community, they were accompanied by two other lecturers, Damián Vázquez, MD, director of the Translation Department at Editorial Panamericana in Buenos Aires, and Carmen Hurtado, secretary of Tremédica and freelance scientific-medical translator from Spain, who lives now in Argentina.

The evening before the Symposium, Gustavo Silva delivered a hands-on workshop on translation for the health care sector, which increased the interest in the Symposium and resulted in many late-comers showing up the following day, anxious for another opportunity to participate in this learning experience.

On Saturday, before the lunch break, Tremédica’s members delivered a presentation on the history, vision and mission of this Association, and educated the audience on how to navigate its website and apply for membership. Such presentation raised public awareness on the high-quality work Tremédica has been doing for years, and how each individual can collaborate for further growth. Once again, the lecturer’s generosity and an overt communication were key for the audience’s positive feedback on the event as a whole.

After the conference was over, all lecturers mingled among attendees and a spontaneous networking atmosphere prolonged the event for a few extra hours, with people showing their willingness to stay and share their professional experiences. Attendee’s feedback was positive and encouraged us to keep working together on this kind of initiatives for professional development.

On behalf of Ocean Translations S.R.L. and the Argentinean potential and consolidated medical translators and reviewers, we want to thank Tremédica for their vast support and guidance through this new collaborating experience and, of course, we would like to give special thanks to the four lecturers because, as Aristotle says, “all men by nature desire knowledge, and that is what they have laid upon us”.