Translating Turkish medical records for the NHS

Who this is for

You have moved to the UK mid-treatment, or you had surgery in İstanbul last summer, or your mother has come to live with you and arrives with a carrier bag of hospital paperwork. A GP or consultant now needs to know what was done, when, and with which medicines. Nobody at the surgery reads Turkish, and there is no NHS translation department to send the file to. This guide sets out what is worth translating, what to leave out, and how a careful medical translation is put together.

What the NHS does and does not require

Registering with a GP surgery is easier than most new arrivals believe: the NHS states that you do not need proof of address or immigration status, identification or an NHS number to register, and a practice should not refuse you for lacking them. Nothing in that guidance mentions medical records, because your past history is not a condition of registration. The need for translation arises later and from the clinician, not from a rule: a GP writing a repeat prescription, a consultant taking over cancer follow-up, a midwife reading an obstetric history, or a school nurse deciding which childhood vaccinations are outstanding. Interpreting at appointments is a different matter and is arranged by the practice; translating the papers you bring with you is generally left to you. That distinction surprises people, so it is worth stating plainly.

The Turkish documents worth translating

• Epikriz — the discharge summary, and the single most useful document. It gives the diagnosis, the procedure, the medicines on discharge and the follow-up plan in two to four pages.
• Sağlık kurulu raporu / heyet raporu — the medical board report, used in Türkiye for disability status, fitness and benefits, and often the document a UK assessor or employer wants.
• İlaç raporu and reçete — the medication report authorising long-term treatment, and prescriptions. See prescriptions and medication reports.
• Patoloji, radyoloji and laboratuvar sonuçları — pathology, imaging and laboratory results. Imaging images travel on their own; it is the report that needs translating.
• Ameliyat notu — the operation note, which a UK surgeon will want before revising anything.
• Aşı kartı — the vaccination card, needed to fit a child into the UK immunisation schedule; see the vaccination record page.

Most files contain a great deal that nobody will read: appointment slips, pharmacy receipts, repeated identical blood counts. Sort by relevance before you pay by the page.

Terminology, and where translations go wrong

Medicine is where a cheap translation does real damage, so it is worth knowing what we do. Diagnoses carry ICD-10 codes in Turkish reports and we keep the codes, which lets a UK clinician confirm the diagnosis independently of our wording. Drug names are the biggest trap: Turkish reports use local brand names that mean nothing here, so we give the international non-proprietary name alongside the brand as printed, and we never substitute a UK product or convert a dose. Turkish laboratory reports print their own reference ranges and units, which we reproduce exactly rather than converting, because the range belongs to the laboratory that produced the figure. Handwriting is common on prescriptions and ward notes; where a word is genuinely illegible we mark it as such instead of guessing, and say so in a translator’s note. Finally, a translation is not a clinical opinion. We render what the Turkish document says. Whether the treatment continues, changes or stops is for the clinician reading it.

Insurers, employers and immigration

The same translated file often serves more than one purpose. A UK insurer assessing a claim or a pre-existing condition will ask for the underlying reports; an employer’s occupational health service may want the board report; an immigration application relying on medical grounds, or an adult dependent relative application resting on care needs, will need the reports certified in the format the Home Office describes. We certify medical translations the same way as any other document, with the accuracy statement, date, company details and signature, so one translation can go to the GP and into a legal file without being redone.

Timing, fees and confidentiality

• From £10 per page of 1,000 characters, certification included. A typical epikriz costs £20–40, a vaccination card £10, a board report £20–30.
• One to two working days for a short file; longer sets are quoted after we see them. Urgent handling adds 60 per cent.
• Paper copies by courier from Ankara £30, rarely needed, since clinics accept PDFs. No UK VAT is charged.
• Health records are sensitive personal data. Scans are handled under confidentiality undertakings by the translators who work on them, are not shared beyond that, and are deleted from our systems on request once the job is delivered.

Mistakes we see

• Sending 120 pages when the consultant asked for the discharge summary and the last two scan reports.
• Photographing pages at an angle so figures and decimal points are unreadable; scan flat, at full page.
• Leaving out the second side of a report, where the signature, stamp and doctor’s registration number sit.
• Asking us to “simplify” a diagnosis into plain English. We translate the document; a summary written for a patient is a different thing and should not be mistaken for the record.
• Waiting until the appointment. Ask the surgery which documents it needs, then allow two working days.