Medical Terms Given New Twist for Eskimos

Inupiaq translator Margaret Glastetter knew it was time to quit three years ago when she had to tell an Alaska Native Medical Center patient that he had lung cancer and only three months to live.

The man did not speak English. He was her brother.

“I explained everything for him,” she recalled, “the chemotherapy, the radiation.

“I had to translate that he was dying. That was a turning point for me.”

The words are not easy in any language. And as a group of North Slope Borough translators in Barrow found out, medical terms are more likely to frighten when they are misunderstood.

To help both patients who spoke little or no English and medical staff who spoke little or no Inupiaq, the borough funded a three-year project to translate dozens of symptoms and parts of the body into Inupiaq--the indigenous language of North Slope Inupiaq Eskimos.

The result is a 71-page booklet with entries for everything from “illiaq”--womb--to “kavigruaqsimmagnik irrak”--bloodshot eyes.

Some terms never existed in Inupiaq before. Others, such as the word for cardiac arrest, had existed but had dropped out of use.

Glastetter, who spent 10 years at the medical center in Anchorage before moving to Barrow to direct alcohol and mental health programs, said there were lots of times when words failed, and specialists made themselves understood by drawing diagrams.

“If somebody had a heart problem, there might be no specific word for heart valve,” Glastetter said. “Another one that was common was prostate cancer. I had no Inupiaq word for that.

“But even if you speak English, do you understand everything the doctor tells you?” she asked. “With a different language entirely, you could end up with a bad diagnosis.”

Of the roughly 6,000 people who live in the North Slope Borough--which includes the Prudhoe Bay oil field and stretches 650 miles east to west along the Arctic Ocean--Eskimos, Aleuts and Indians outnumber whites by about four to one.

The population includes elders who speak limited or no English, and young families determined to pass on the Inupiaq language to their children.

“Most of the illnesses were not in Inupiaq,” said Dorothy Edwardson, one of about 10 translators and editors who compiled the terms.

Before the standard guide, medical interpreters say they would wring all they could from the Inupiaq language--which excels in stringing descriptive words together to make unique, specific definitions.

For instance, an English-language diagnosis involving the pituitary might explain that it is a small hormone-secreting gland near the base of the brain that governs other endocrine glands, as well as body growth and metabolism.

Inupiaq speakers, consulting the new reference guide, find a translation based on elders’ observations that the pituitary is linked to the onset of adolescence--loosely translated as “when the light comes on.”

For Beverly Aqannik Hugo, a 39-year-old physician’s assistant who grew up on the North Slope speaking Inupiaq and learned English at school, working on the medical book taught her how flexible the ancient language can be.

“I never knew they had terms like this--you know, saying the pituitary gland is like light showers flooding down through the body,” she said.

Medical translators used a number of reference books and relied on Hugo as a kind of arbitrator when there were varying interpretations for the same term. When there was no consensus, they went to the elders.

Hugo recalled some disagreement over the translation for diabetes mellitus, which the dictionary says is from the Latin and literally means honey diabetes.

Logically enough, the translators wanted to work in something about spilling sugar. But Hugo insisted on more specific references to insulin, glucose and pancreatic malfunction.

Translators say they think the sections covering gynecological, urinary and mental health terms will be among the best used. The interpreters said even women conversant in English will ask for translators if they need a gynecological exam.

“These are areas of a delicate nature,” Hugo said. “But with an interpreter, people feel it’s not so embarrassing--they’re not saying it out of their mouth.”