Translating medical records without sharing them
Discharge letters, lab results and reports from clinics abroad are some of the most personal documents there are. To read one in your language without handing it to a cloud service, translate it on your own device: select the text on your Mac and press ⌃⌥T, and nothing is sent anywhere.
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Why health data deserves a private translator
A medical document carries your name, date of birth, diagnoses and medicines all at once. An online translator has to receive all of it to translate it, and its provider may then keep a copy under its own policy. You may not mind that for a pharmacy leaflet; for your own records, or a relative's, it is reasonable to want no copy anywhere but your computer.
Translate a medical report on your Mac
- Open the report: a PDF in Preview, an email, or the page of a patient portal.
- Select a section — the summary, the findings, the list of medicines.
- Press ⌃⌥T. Kalila opens in the menu bar with the translation.
- For an unfamiliar term, select just that word: the dictionary card shows its meanings, with examples.
Kalila for Mac uses Apple's on-device translation and only the languages downloaded to your Mac. It has no account and no analytics, and it keeps no copy anywhere but in its history on your Mac, which you can clear. On another computer or a phone, paste the text into kalila.app/translate: it is translated inside the browser tab and not sent to a server.
Version 0.2.3 · macOS 26.4 or later · Apple Silicon
Use it to understand, not to decide
Machine translation is good at telling you what a document says. It can still miss an abbreviation, a dose or a nuance, and medical shorthand differs from country to country. So:
- use it to read your own documents and prepare questions for your doctor;
- always check doses and drug names in the original; never rely on the translation alone;
- for treatment decisions, a hospital admission or an insurance claim, ask for a qualified medical translator or interpreter.
For doctors and clinic staff
Reading a referral or a foreign colleague's letter is easier with a translator at hand. Before translating patient data with any tool, follow your organization's rules on health data. Kalila doesn't transmit or store text outside the Mac it runs on, which keeps patient text off third-party servers. Whether that is enough for your use is for your organization to decide. Kalila is not a medical device.
Questions
Is it safe to put medical records into an online translator?
It means sending your health data to a company's servers, where it is handled under that company's policy. If you would rather nobody else had a copy, translate on your own device.
Can I translate a scanned medical report?
Only if you can select its text. A scan is a picture of the page, but macOS Live Text can often pick out text in images: try selecting it in Preview. If that doesn't work, ask the clinic for the original electronic document.
Does Kalila keep my medical documents?
It keeps recent translations in its history on your Mac, so you can find them again, and you can clear the history at any time. Nothing is uploaded.
Does it work offline, for example in a hospital?
Yes. Once the two languages are downloaded, Kalila translates with no internet connection.
Which languages does it cover?
Kalila for Mac covers 26 languages with Apple's on-device translation, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Arabic, Chinese and Russian. The online translator covers 58.
Related
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