With 10 years of experience in medical and pharmaceutical translation, I have translated for patients, pharmaceutical companies, researchers, and students many times. Translation is the process of understanding a text in a foreign language and rewriting it in the native language of the translator. I translate patient information sheets, clinical trial presentations, clinical science papers, training material, and pharmaceutical marketing material. The target readers can be as varied as in medical writing: general practitioners, health outcome experts, nurses, patients, or a general audience. For the December 2020 issue of Medical Writing, the theme of which was “Writing for patients”, Andrea Rossi wrote an excellent article on translation. I think that this is the perfect, although unintentional, introduction to the series of articles that the translators from the MedComms group have started to publish. Thank you, Andrea!