Letters (foreign) HELP!!

[lrs07g]

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Dear SDN users,
I have a question about a couple of potential letters of rec. I may obtain.
I volunteered abroad in Honduras, and gained a lot of clinical experience there....shadowing etc. I got to know the doctor there very well, and his letter would probably be my strongest. However.........his english is not very good. Is there a certain process I need to follow to get a letter from him? Can he take it to an official translator and then send it in? Or do I send it and the admissions comittees translate it?

Please let me know if you have any idea, as this letter would really help my application. Thank you!!

 

[Mazdave]

I'm not an adcom but I'm nearly positive that each individual school's committee won't go and get it translated. Does your school have a pre-med committee that will be receiving your letter first to write a committee letter? They would probably be your best bet for finding out if they would prefer that the letter be translated before it is sent (and what sort of notation if any would need to be made) or if they would prefer to receive it untranslated and give it to a Spanish prof. or somebody to look at.

 

[apumic]

Dear SDN users,
I have a question about a couple of potential letters of rec. I may obtain.
I volunteered abroad in Honduras, and gained a lot of clinical experience there....shadowing etc. I got to know the doctor there very well, and his letter would probably be my strongest. However.........his english is not very good. Is there a certain process I need to follow to get a letter from him? Can he take it to an official translator and then send it in? Or do I send it and the admissions comittees translate it?

Please let me know if you have any idea, as this letter would really help my application. Thank you!!

Honestly, I'd probably suggesting having someone else write your letter. The reality is that he is probably not going to know how to write a good letter (even in Spanish) for US MD and DO schools. He may think the world of you but if he cannot express it, it is, unfortunately, useless to you in terms of an LOR. I don't know that I'd trust someone else to translate his letter and effectively market you in the translated version. It is simply likely to lose that special something. Maybe it's just me, but when I translate something from Spanish to English (or vice versa), it's often difficult (and sometimes impossible) to keep the exact mood the original speaker or writer desired. For one thing, it requires fully understanding what the person is really saying (including the context and connotation) and then, secondly, it requires that the target language has the means to express that same feeling, which is often strangely absent in another language. I guess it comes down to a question of whether you would trust someone nonmedical to write a good LOR for you on behalf of a physician; I probably wouldn't.