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Job Summary

The Inpatient Medical Translator plays a critical role in ensuring clear, culturally appropriate, and accurate communication between care teams and patients with limited English proficiency. This role supports the point-of-care translation model, combining vendor-based machine translation with internal human review to deliver high-quality, timely patient care documents, including discharge instructions. The Translator ensures message integrity, cultural sensitivity, and health literacy standards to promote patient understanding, safety, and equitable care.

Job Duties

• Translate written patient care documents, including discharge instructions and educational materials, from the source language to the target language while ensuring linguistic accuracy and cultural appropriateness.
• Review, edit, and finalize vendor-provided or machine-translated documents to maintain intended meaning, clarity, and tone of the original content.
• Adapt translations to reflect cultural nuances and patient preferences, preserving context and ensuring health literacy principles are applied.
• Collaborate with clinical staff, language services leadership, and vendor partners to clarify terminology and meet turnaround time goals.
• Manage multiple translation requests simultaneously, prioritizing urgent inpatient discharges while maintaining high quality standards.
• Utilize translation software tools, glossaries, and organizational style guides to enhance efficiency and maintain consistency across documents.
• Conduct research on medical terminology, cultural references, and best practices to ensure accurate and contextually appropriate translations.
• Provide insights on language trends and enhanced communication strategies to improve translation services and patient outcomes.
• Handle sensitive patient information with the utmost confidentiality and professionalism in accordance with HIPAA and organizational policies.
• Incorporate feedback from clinical teams and reviewers to continuously refine translation accuracy and service satisfaction.
• Participate in ongoing training, professional development, and quality improvement initiatives within the Translation Center of Excellence.

Work is typically performed in an office environment. Accountable for satisfying all job specific obligations and complying with all organization policies and procedures. The specific statements in this profile are not intended to be all-inclusive. They represent typical elements considered necessary to successfully perform the job.

Position Details

Qualifications:

• High school diploma required; Bachelor’s degree in Translation, Linguistics, Spanish, Healthcare, or a related field preferred.
• Certification as a Medical Translator highly preferred.
• Minimum of 2–3 years of professional experience in medical translation or interpretation, preferably within a healthcare setting (5 years of translation experience required).
• Strong proficiency in Spanish and English with exceptional written and verbal communication skills.
• Cultural competency with the ability to adapt translations to diverse patient populations while preserving message integrity.
• Familiarity with Epic or other EHR systems preferred.
• Demonstrated ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously while meeting deadlines and quality standards.

Competencies:

• Exceptional attention to detail and linguistic accuracy.
• Strong cultural awareness and health literacy knowledge.
• Ability to prioritize tasks efficiently in a fast-paced clinical environment.
• Excellent collaboration, communication, and problem-solving skills.
• Commitment to patient safety, confidentiality, and equitable care.

Location:

• Hybrid – primarily remote with occasional on-site presence as needed.

Schedule:

• Full-time, Monday–Friday, with potential for limited on-call coverage based on operational needs and discharge volumes.

Education

High School Diploma or Equivalent (GED)- (Required), Bachelor's Degree- (Preferred)

Experience

Minimum of 5 years-Related work experience (Required)

Skills

Bilingual; Computer Literacy; Interpersonal Communication; Working Independently; Customer Service; Communication

About Geisinger

Founded more than 100 years ago by Abigail Geisinger, the system now includes ten hospital campuses, a 550,000-member health plan, two research centers and the Geisinger Commonwealth School of Medicine. With nearly 24,000 employees and more than 1,700 employed physicians, Geisinger boosts its hometown economies in Pennsylvania by billions of dollars annually. Learn more at geisinger.org or connect with us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Equal Opportunity Employer

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, age, pregnancy, genetic information, disability, status as a protected veteran, or any other protected category under applicable federal, state, and local laws.

Our Vision & Values

Everything we do is about making better health easier for our patients, our members, our students, our Geisinger family and our communities.

KINDNESS: We strive to treat everyone as we would hope to be treated ourselves.

EXCELLENCE: We treasure colleagues who humbly strive for excellence.

LEARNING: We share our knowledge with the best and brightest to better prepare the caregivers for tomorrow.

INNOVATION: We constantly seek new and better ways to care for our patients, our members, our community, and the nation.

SAFETY: We provide a safe environment for our patients and members and the Geisinger family.

Our Benefits

We offer healthcare benefits for full time and part time positions from day one, including vision, dental and prescription coverage.