SEOUL- Korea has ambition to become a major destination for medical tourism within the next five years. The government has been supporting the globalization of Korean medical institutions under a brand campaign “Medical Korea”, in an effort to promote its medical sector abroad. So far, according to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, total number of foreign patients who visited Korea for medical treatment surpassed 110,000 last year, up from 81,789 in 2010. If everything goes according to Korea’s ambitious development plans in this niche market, the country could attract over 150,000 foreign patients this year and target 400,000 visitors for medical purposes by 2018. By comparison, in 2007, less than 8,000 foreign travellers came to Korea for medical tourism.
The government has been making efforts over the past few years to develop medical tourism as one of its new growth engines. An agreement has been for example signed with health authorities in Abu Dhabi to allow citizens from the UAE to get treatment in four contracted local facilities in four hospitals located in Seoul. According to Korea’s Health Ministry, the agreement could generate economic benefits of US$ 52 million per year. Various programs have also been introduced by the government and related state agencies to facilitate the arrival of tourists for medical purposes. Initiatives include the issuance of medical treatment visas, operation of an around-the-clock medical call centre as well as dedicated one-stop medical tourism service centres. Special visa issuance has already helped to welcome in 2011 some 8,259 for countries such as Russia, China PRC as well as Mongolia. Russia is seen as one of the market with the highest potential. An office to promote Medical Tourism has recently been opened in Vladivostok in Siberia.
Speaking with the Korean daily “The Korea Times”, Korea Tourism Organization (KTO)’s chief Lee Charm sees medical tourism as the next big thing for the nation’s tourism industry. “The prospect for medical tourism is fantastic. The area of medical service has unlimited growth potential.” Lee said. The high level of services, the blend of traditional Korean medicines with Western medical knowledge as well as a safe and reliable environment is considered as assets to futher develop medical tourism. Korea medical services are also price competitive, especially when compared to Western European countries. “We are a bit more expensive than Thailand but our environment is much better and safer,” added Lee to the newspaper.
by Luc Citrinot
Read more: http://traveldailynews.asia/news/article/49911/korea-is-looking-to-become
The pending implementation of the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare, will not stop or even slow down the moving train that is medical travel and tourism, say experts in the field.
Just days before the Supreme Court’s June 28 ruling giving a thumbs-up to most of the Affordable Care Act, David Boucher, president of Companion Global Healthcare, commented that regardless of the court’s decision, the major factors driving medical tourism would continue.
“The escalating cost of (U.S.) medical care and the continued decline in quality is ensuring the future of medical travel,” Boucher said during a presentation at the recent Well-Being and Medical Travel Conference.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling, Travel Market Report asked Boucher and other medical tourism experts for their perspectives on the impact of the Affordable Care Act on the future of medical travel.
If, as the Affordable Care Act promises, almost all Americans are covered by health insurance, will fewer people travel to save money on medical procedures?
Josef Woodman, publisher of Patients Beyond Borders medical travel guides: The answer is yes, no and neutral. On the one hand, those who are currently uninsured – a huge component of medical travel – will gain access to covered healthcare. Some may be able to stay in the U.S. for an orthopedic procedure that they were previously not insured for. Some of this will take away from medical travel.
On the other hand, you can’t have 30 million Americans (the currently uninsured who are expected to gain coverage) entering our already broken system without a tradeoff in the form of longer waits for specialty care.
If you look at Canada and the U.K., where there are long-established healthcare systems, this has been the case. So the people who can afford to travel for specialty care to places like the Cleveland Clinic or Sloane-Kettering will do so. Those who can’t will be stuck with long waits.
Boucher: Americans and Canadians will continue to travel abroad and domestically for healthcare, whether it’s to a Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins or other facility. They are looking for safety and service, which are both leading motivators to travel for healthcare. Price is only the third consideration.
Most employers indicate that they continue to be interested in the right services for their members at the right place and right price. If that means changing their benefit plans to cover travel to the Cleveland Clinic, they are increasingly open to it. Nothing in (the Affordable Care Act) will change this.
We will see more companies following in the path of Pepsico and Lowes in this regard.
(See story, PepsiCo Med Travel Benefit Expands Market for Agents, December 22, 2011
Kiana Bright, vice president, Thailand Medical Travel and Tourism: More Americans will travel overseas for healthcare. Accessibility of care will be a long-term problem if more people are brought into the healthcare system. Canada has universal healthcare and is a perfect example of this. Many Canadians have to wait up to seven months or more to receive knee replacement surgery.
In addition, the healthcare cost will be increased for employers. This will drive them to find creative options to save money. Medical tourism can be the answer for that.
Are there areas of medical tourism that will not be impacted by the Affordable Care Act?
Boucher: It should have no impact at all on dental coverage and therefore dental tourism. In fact, a lot of Americans are dropping their dental coverage. Even if you are covered, most dental premiums have a $1,500 or $2,000 a year maximum at best. So if you need $15,000 worth of dental work and you are only covered for $1,500, it still pays to travel for dental care.
Woodman: There is a vast landscape that will not change at all. Dentistry is not covered (under the Affordable Care Act), neither are cosmetic surgeries and some bariatric procedures. Dentistry and cosmetic surgery comprise over half of all medical travel – and if you add in elective surgery, that’s about 75%.
What other factors beyond cost and insurance coverage are driving the future of medical tourism?
Boucher: With the increasing shift toward greater transparency and consumer awareness, there will be an increase in Americans traveling for healthcare as they learn more about the high quality care available overseas.
There’s so much more information out there on the safety, quality and service provided by medical institutions. More consumers are sharing their experiences. It’s no longer just what the medical facility wants to tell us. People will increasingly be able to make educated decisions.
Woodman: Global options for healthcare will be something that more people are comfortable with. People are growing savvier about these options already – there are people who are getting off a cruise ship and getting an MRI while in port.
We haven’t yet reached a critical mass on healthcare transparency but it is coming. More patients will be rating their experiences online. It will be like hotels on TripAdvisor.
Hospitals are offering packages and special deals, but not enough yet and they are not posted on their websites. The next phase is to pry all this information loose and aggregate it. It will be easier to shop and compare.
The global potential for medical travel is huge – and increased global activity will lead to improvements in healthcare. There’s a huge growth of the middle class in other countries, which means more people can travel for healthcare. Hospitals will be forced to compete.
Read more: http://www.travelmarketreport.com/medical?articleID=7456&LP=1
TWIN FALLS, Idaho (AP) — Erica De La Rosa is in court nearly every day, but she never speaks for herself.
“We’re not supposed to exist,” she said.
De La Rosa is a court certified Spanish interpreter for Twin Falls County 5th District Court. Interpreters are not lawyers or advocates and don’t give legal advice or even explain to defendants possible outcomes in their case.
“You say what they say,” she said, no matter how shocking or strange it might be.
Idaho law requires that courts ensure access to all people, including those with limited English proficiency or those who are deaf or hard-of-hearing. The courts meet these requirements by developing programs that improve the quality of interpretation and increase the number of qualified interpreters in the courts, according to the Idaho Supreme Court website.
Interpreters are under oath to completely and accurately translate what is said in court to the best of their ability, said Mary Jo Palma, the coordinator for translators in Twin Falls County, and a certified Spanish interpreter.
“If an interpreter becomes aware they’ve made a mistake they’re under obligation to correct it,” Palma said. “If an interpreter is challenged, the judge will rule accordingly.”
One case where an interpreter was questioned is currently making its way through court in Twin Falls County.
Valentin Calvillo was sentenced to serve 15 to 30 years in state prison in November 2011 after being convicted by a jury of eight counts of lewd conduct and sexual abuse of a minor in November 2010. His sentence was delayed for a year because Calvillo, 50, skipped his trial after showing up for the first few days.
When he returned, Calvillo petitioned for a new trial, arguing he misunderstood instructions from his defense counsel when he was told to leave and seek medical treatment. With a new attorney, Calvillo unsuccessfully argued for a new trial during the summer and fall of 2011.
Calvillo’s attorney, Virginia Bond, was in court again two week ago asking Judge Richard Bevan for an independent translator to go over transcripts from the case and look for errors in translation.
During one hearing, Calvillo’s family began gesturing to say there was a mistranslation about why Calvillo felt sick the day of the trial, Bond told the court.
Twin Falls County Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Suzanne Craig said Calvillo claimed he didn’t feel good about being in front of a jury, not that he was actually ill.
Since Bond wasn’t the attorney during the hearing when the exchange occurred and doesn’t understand Spanish herself, she wanted someone else to listen to the audio recording of the hearing to see if the transcript matches up.
Bevan agreed to take the request under advisement and a new court date was set for Aug. 2.
When a translation is questioned, it can be a bit embarrassing, De La Rosa said.
“You just say, ‘excuse me your honor, the interpreter made a mistake,'” she said. “If it’s a simple mistake it’s not a big deal, but it’s humbling.”
Occasionally interpreters have to translate for someone in a language other than the one they know best. A person might speak a language that’s difficult to find an interpreter for, with Spanish being their second language and English their third.
The judge speaks in English, the interpreter translates to Spanish and the defendant must translate in their head to their own language and then the process starts again.
“It’s an art,” De La Rosa said.
This glossary of key election terminology is prepared by U.S. Election Assistance Commission. This glossary includes a total of 1,843 terms and phrases used in the administration of elections in the United States. This will be a good source for Korean to English translators and interpreters.
Once you start learning a new language and get more and more fluent, you may want to become a translator. However, it is not that easy.
It is an attractive job to be a translator or interpreter for many bilinguals or multilinguals. It has many benefits compared with other kinds of work. Firstly, you will have great freedom to decide how you want to work. There are plenty of choices of working place, for example, at home, in the pub, or in the office. It can be a full-time job, which you need to be registered with a translation company, or you can work for yourself and be a freelance. It can also be a part-time job – you can do translation during your spare time.
Secondly, being a translator or interpreter brings you good income. In Shanghai, China, an interpreter can be paid up to 7,000 RMB (£700) per hour for providing Chinese-English simultaneous interpretation. Translation, however, is much cheaper. It ranges from £8 to £20 per thousand words, which depends on the translator’s skills.
Thirdly, it will never be catastrophically affected by things like economic crisis which always causes a high level of unemployment. Whether we are in great recession or prosperity, there’s always need for communication among countries and their people. Translators build a bridge for that communication. Indeed, translators are so important, as a joke says that a mistake in translation might start a war.
However, not everyone can be a translator. Being an interpreter is much more difficult. It needs years of intensive training. A translator or interpreter must be fluent in both source and target languages. You have to be excellent in all of the four skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. You must know the differences between two languages to avoid the awkward situation in which, for example, a Chinese sentence is translated into English but still keeps Chinese syntactical structure. Such translations always cause confusion among readers. What are they going say?
Apart from the knowledge of languages, translators and interpreters need to have knowledge of other disciplines. In other words, you are expected to know everything! I used to translate reports about biology. Those terminologies almost killed me. However, the lack of knowledge can be compensated by a great ability of learning. If you can grasp the main concept of some subjects, all you need is a few hours preparation before the work.
If you are interested in interpreting, you need to get started with practising taking notes. Approximately, you need to keep practising until you use 200 sheets of A4 paper before you can follow the speaker without missing any important information.
Personalities are another essential factor. You need to be concentrated during your interpretation. You need to keep calm and react quickly when there is an emergency, for example, the speaker forgets about the interpreter and keeps talking all the time, there is something you don’t understand, or occasionally you drop your pen.
Every year there is a large number of ambitious students trying to out do each other in the pursuit of a career as a translator or interpreter, but not all can succeed.
All in all, interpretation or translation is definitely a difficult task. But if you have native-like fluency in more than two languages, a great deal of knowledge, and practical translating or interpreting skills, and if you are a quick learner, then you are the right person for the job.
This booklet is meant to assist Korean-speaking individuals who need help to understand the technical tax terms contained in the state income tax forms and instructions.
This bilingual English-Korean glossary is designed to be used as a working document for English-Korean court interpreters. This glossary contains approximately 450 words selected as frequently used legal terms in states courts.
Download the glossary of legal terms for English to Korean court interpreters
In a 361-page joint filing late Friday Apple and Samsung laid out their respective objections to the opposing party’s preliminary jury instructions for the upcoming district court patent trial scheduled for the end of July.
The disputed proposed jury instructions cover a host of procedural necessities regarding juror handling and includes operating minutiae down to when an instruction can be given and how said instruction is phrased. Many objections are based on unnecessary verbiage or when an instruction should be given, though some call race into contention and illustrate the implications of trying an international patent case in the U.S.
Samsung is worried about how a jury may perceive a supporting witness’s ethnicity as seen in the South Korean company’s juror questionnaire and has extended that concern to jury instructions.
For example, Samsung disputes Apple’s proposed reading of the following when the first foreign speaker testifies:
Languages other than English may be used during this trial. One such language will be Korean.
The evidence to be considered by you is only that provided through the official court translators. Although some of you may know Korean, it is important that all jurors consider the same evidence. Therefore, you must accept the English translation. You must disregard any different meaning.
In objection, the Galaxy maker claims that the “proposal will disrupt the trial and unnecessarily call attention to the witness’ ethnicity.” The company is looking to remove any relation of ethnicity and expert testimony during the trial and wants to keep the issue of race out of the proceedings completely.
Samsung’s proposed instruction reads almost identically to Apple’s, though “Korean” has been removed from the leading sentence:
Languages other than English may be used during this trial.
Witnesses who do not speak English or are more proficient in another language testify through an official court interpreter. Although some of you may know, for example, Korean, it is important that all jurors consider the same evidence. Therefore, you must accept the interpreter’s translation of the witness’s testimony. You must disregard any different meaning.
At issue is the interpretation of testimony given by Korean-speaking experts by a Korean-speaking juror who may form a different translation than the one given by a court interpreter.
While most of the parties’ objections are par for the course, some call into question the interpretation of certain trade and patent laws which are instrumental in trying a case regarding such issues. An example is Samsung’s proposed design patent summary which states “[a] ‘design patent’ protects the way an article looks, but not the way it functions.” Apple takes issue with this statement, asserting that the “instruction is misleading because design patents protect articles of manufacture that have or serve a function, so long as the overall design of the article is not “dictated by function.” Similar objections are seen throughout the document.
Presiding Judge Lucy Koh will take the proposed instructions into consideration and may request an updated pared-down set this week. Another option would be to hold judgment until the pretrial conference scheduled in which case the parties would have to make dynamic adjustments during the trial.
The Apple v. Samsung jury trial is slated to begin with juror selection on July 30.
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