Translating medical journals into Arabic. JAMA Middle East as an example.

JAMA Middle East has distributed monthly 25,000 issues into 14 Arab countries since 1991. Translating the original articles into Arabic was considered as the license permits translation. The number of Arab physicians exceeds 250,000, but those who studied medicine in Arabic are very few. Adequate translators and other publishing staff are lacking. Advertisers will not invest in journals without readership. The other 13 international editions of JAMA publish in their national languages, so do their medical schools. Teaching medicine in a foreign language did not bring leadership to Arab medicine. It is just another indicator of Arab underdevelopment. There is growing support to shift the language of medical teaching into Arabic, but the only practical step has been the Unified Medical Dictionary.