I came across translating a semantic tag during translations: I checked the SNOMED Int. guidelines, but nowhere is it specified whether semantic tags should also be translated or whether they should be left in English.
According to the Translation Guide (Section 4, “Translating SNOMED CT”), the FSN and the Preferred Term (PT) are treated somewhat differently: the FSN is always the starting point for translation work, but translating the FSN itself into a stored description is a national decision — while the PT is always translated into a clinically usable term.
1. Starting point of translation: always the FSN’s meaning, never the literal term
The guide’s core principle is concept-based translation: a translation should never start from the term to be translated literally, but should always be based on the FSN, which describes the concept’s meaning in natural language, together with the concept’s position in the ontology (its formal definition). The guide’s example is Pericardium — a literal translation into Norwegian (“hjertesekk”) would actually correspond to the subordinate concept Pericardial sac instead. So a correct translation requires understanding the FSN and hierarchy position, not just a dictionary lookup.
2. Should the FSN itself be translated — or not?
The guide lays out explicit arguments for and against, and leaves the decision to the national translation project owner (the NRC):
Arguments in favor:
- Helps identify duplicate concepts
- Gives local terminologists a description that’s unique, unambiguous, and context-independent
- The FSN’s stringent wording allows more freedom for the PT (e.g., use of acronyms)
Arguments against:
- The FSN is the “source of truth”
- The FSN should ideally be immutable
- The editing tool may not allow multiple FSNs for countries with several languages
- Translating the FSN requires more resources
→ So the decision depends on the individual National Release Center (NRC).
3. The Preferred Term (PT) is always translated into a practical, usable term
The PT, by contrast, is the term actually used in clinical practice — it needs to be understandable and clinically appropriate, and is often translated to be “clinician-friendly,” even if the FSN itself stays unchanged or untranslated. Per the Editorial Guide, the FSN isn’t always clinician-friendly (e.g., FSN “Repair of common bile duct (procedure)” vs. PT “Choledochoplasty”) — the same principle applies in translation: the PT is chosen to match clinical usage in the target language, even if it diverges from the FSN’s exact wording.
Summary: Translation work always starts from analyzing the FSN’s meaning, but actually translating the FSN into a separate stored description is optional and depends on national resources/principles — the PT, however, is always translated, since it’s the term used in clinical practice.
This leaves open the question of translating the semantic tag if the NRC had the resources to do it and publish it: are the tools provided by SNOMED Int. able to handle non-English tags without generating error messages?