The cardiologist just said “transthoracic echocardiogram” and you blanked. Not because you’ve never heard it — you interpreted it three weeks ago. You looked it up, found the perfect equivalent, used it on the call, and then never wrote it down. Now you’re back to square one, mid-call, improvising.
This is the problem a glossary bank solves. Not by making you smarter. By making sure the work you’ve already done doesn’t disappear.
What a Glossary Bank Actually Is
A glossary bank is a personal terminology database. Not a dictionary. Not a word list someone else made. It’s your collection — built from your calls, your specialties, your language pair, your real encounters with terms that tripped you up or took effort to nail down.
It grows with you. After six months of consistent entries, you’ll have a reference that no published glossary can match, because it reflects the exact terminology landscape you work in.
Think of it as compound interest for your interpreting career. Every term you add pays dividends on every future call where that term comes up. The interpreters who seem to know everything? They’ve been building this for years.
Why OPI Interpreters Need One More Than Anyone
Conference interpreters get briefing materials. Court interpreters know the case type in advance. Medical interpreters working on-site often see the same departments and providers.
OPI interpreters get a ring tone and zero context. Cardiology, then immigration, then a utility billing dispute, then pediatric oncology. You’re expected to handle dozens of specialties with no prep time.
Your glossary is your prep. It’s the only preparation that works when you don’t know what’s coming.
The interpreter who looks up a term once and writes it down will always outperform the interpreter who looks up the same term five times and never does.
What Goes in a Glossary Entry
A useful glossary entry has more than two columns. The term alone isn’t enough — you need enough context to use it correctly when you’re under pressure and haven’t seen it in weeks.
Here’s what a solid entry looks like:
| Field | Example |
|---|---|
| Source term | transthoracic echocardiogram |
| Target term | ecocardiograma transtorácico |
| Abbreviation | TTE |
| Definition/context | Ultrasound of the heart through the chest wall; non-invasive |
| Specialty | Cardiology |
| Example sentence | ”We’ll schedule a transthoracic echocardiogram to check your valve function.” |
| Date added | 2026-03-15 |
The definition and example sentence matter more than you think. Three weeks from now, the term alone might not trigger full recall. The context brings it back.
TIP
Don’t overthink the format. Start with five columns: source term, target term, definition, specialty, and date. You can always add fields later. The glossary you actually maintain beats the perfect one you never start.
How to Organize It
Organization determines whether you’ll actually use your glossary under pressure. A 500-term alphabetical list is useless when you have three seconds to find a word.
By specialty first, alphabetical within. Group your terms under headers: Medical, Legal, Insurance, Education, Immigration, Social Services. Within each specialty, alphabetize. When you get a medical call, you go straight to Medical and scan. No wading through legal terminology to find a diagnosis.
For medical terms specifically, sub-grouping by body system works even better: Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Gastrointestinal, Musculoskeletal. A cardiology call means you’re scanning 30 focused terms, not 200 general medical ones.
Tag frequency. Mark terms you encounter repeatedly. These are your high-priority review items. If “informed consent” comes up on every legal call, it should be the first term you see when you open that section.
Where to Find Terms
You don’t need to invent your terminology database from scratch. Good sources already exist — you just need to pull from them systematically.
Your own calls. This is the best source. Every time you hesitate, look something up, or ask a provider to repeat a term, that term belongs in your glossary. Real calls surface the terminology that matters for your specific work.
CCHI mini-glossaries. The Commission for Certification of Healthcare Interpreters publishes specialty glossaries with 50 to 101 terms per area. These are solid starting templates for medical terminology. Don’t try to memorize them — use them as a foundation to build on. (We covered medical terminology resources in more depth in Medical Terminology for Interpreters.)
NCIHC resources. The National Council on Interpreting in Health Care maintains standards, training materials, and terminology references that are specifically built for healthcare interpreters.
Medical dictionaries and agency training materials. Stedman’s, Dorland’s, or even a bilingual medical dictionary for your language pair. Your agency may also provide term lists for their most common call types — ask if you haven’t already.
Post-call lookups. That term you improvised on the 2 PM call? Look it up after your shift. Confirm the correct equivalent. Add it to your glossary. This takes two minutes and prevents you from reinforcing a wrong translation through repetition.
The Tools: Pick What You’ll Actually Use
Spreadsheets (Google Sheets, Excel). The most common choice, and for good reason. Sortable, searchable, shareable, free. Google Sheets has the advantage of being accessible from your phone — you can search it mid-shift if needed. Add filters by specialty column and you have a functional terminology database in 10 minutes.
Dedicated tools (InterpretBank, Glossary Pro). Purpose-built for interpreters. InterpretBank includes a memorization mode that drills terms like flashcards. If you’re willing to invest in a paid tool, these are more powerful than spreadsheets. (We compared several options in The Interpreter’s Toolkit.)
Notebooks. Analog works for some people. A physical notebook, organized by tabbed sections per specialty, is fast to flip through and never runs out of battery. The downside: it’s not searchable, and if you lose it, it’s gone.
Interpreter shows live transcription on screen during calls, which means terms you’d normally scramble to catch are already visible in front of you. Its Term Mappings feature lets you pre-load up to 50 custom word-to-translation pairs before a session — essentially your personal glossary, built right into the tool. After the call, those transcribed terms become candidates for your broader glossary — you can review what came up and add anything new. It turns every call into a glossary-building opportunity.
The best tool is the one you’ll use consistently. A Google Sheet you update after every shift beats an InterpretBank account you haven’t opened in two months.
Building the Habit
The most common mistake interpreters make with glossaries: trying to build a complete one before they start using it. You sit down on a Saturday, add 200 terms, feel productive, and then never touch it again.
That doesn’t work. A glossary bank is a living document. It grows from real calls, not from study sessions.
The daily minimum: 3 to 5 terms after every shift. Not 30. Not “whenever you have time.” Three to five. This takes under five minutes. After a month, you have 60 to 100 terms — all from your actual work, all relevant to calls you’ll get again.
Weekly review. Spend 10 minutes scanning your recent additions. Read the example sentences. Quiz yourself on target terms. Flag any entries where you’re still unsure about the translation.
Monthly self-test. Cover the target language column. Go through your specialty sections. Can you produce the correct term from the source term alone? The ones you miss get marked for extra review.
TIP
Set a recurring 5-minute calendar block at the end of your interpreting shift labeled “glossary.” Attach it to an existing habit — right after you log off your platform, before you close your laptop. Consistency beats intensity.
Using Your Glossary During Calls
A glossary you can’t access mid-call is a study tool, not a performance tool. Both have value, but the real payoff comes when you can reference it live.
Pre-call review. Some platforms tell you the call type before you connect. If you know it’s a medical call, open your medical section and scan it for 30 seconds. Even a quick glance refreshes your recall.
Quick search. If your glossary is digital and searchable, keep it open in a side window. Cmd+F for a term takes two seconds. This is where spreadsheets and dedicated tools beat notebooks.
Don’t read from it. Your glossary is a safety net, not a script. Glance, confirm, move on. If you’re reading definitions aloud to yourself mid-call, you’ve built a crutch, not a tool.
Start Today, Not Next Week
You don’t need the perfect system. You need a file — any file — with five columns and five terms from your last shift. Open a Google Sheet right now. Add the headers: Source Term, Target Term, Definition, Specialty, Date. Think about your last three calls. What term made you hesitate? What did you look up? What did you wish you’d known?
Write those down. That’s your glossary bank. It’s five terms today. It’ll be 500 in six months. And every single one of them will be a term that matters for the work you actually do.
The interpreters who seem to know every term in every specialty didn’t memorize a dictionary. They built a system, fed it daily, and let it compound. Start yours now.
Related reading: