Yiddish Speakers in New York Can Now Get Prescription Labels in Their Own Language

RxTran adds Yiddish as its 27th language, and a licensed bilingual pharmacist approved every translation

BOSTON, Nov. 10, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Pharmacies serving Yiddish-speaking patients can now print prescription directions in Yiddish. RxTran, a division of Language Scientific, has added Yiddish to its library of pharmacist-verified prescription translations, bringing its total to 27 languages. Yiddish is available now to pharmacies that use RxTran through their pharmacy management system or RxTran's web platform.

Yiddish is the fourth most common language among New Yorkers with limited English proficiency, behind Spanish, Chinese, and Russian, according to the state's language access designations. A patient who reads Yiddish and gets a label printed only in English may have to guess at the dose or timing once they're home.

Each Yiddish translation passed RxTran's five-step quality control review. The directions were translated and then edited independently. A back translation into English was checked against the original, and a licensed bilingual pharmacist who reads Yiddish gave final approval. RxTran's library of more than one million pre-translated SIGs, the directions for use printed on a prescription label, now includes Yiddish.

None of the five state laws that regulate prescription label translation names Yiddish. RxTran added it anyway.

"A pharmacy shouldn't wait for a label law to name a patient's language before serving them," said Sharon Blank, Chief Executive Officer of Language Scientific and RxTran. "Yiddish-speaking families should be able to bring a prescription home and follow the directions on the bottle. Every Yiddish translation in our library went through the same pharmacist review as our other 26 languages."

RxTran integrates with the pharmacy management systems that independent and chain pharmacies use, including Computer-Rx, PDX Enterprise Pharmacy System, QS/1, and Rx30. Pharmacies without an integrated system can order translated labels through RxTran's web platform. The full language list is available at rxtran.com.

"Many Yiddish-speaking patients, especially older adults, can't read English well enough to follow a prescription label, and that's where medication errors happen," said Moshe Ringel, a practicing pharmacist in Lakewood, N.J., who validated RxTran's Yiddish translations. "I went through the translations line by line to make sure they make clinical sense and that a Yiddish speaker would understand them as intended. When patients can read their directions in their own language, they understand what they're taking, they trust their healthcare providers more, and they're more likely to take their medicine as prescribed."

"I once had a patient on a statin who didn't know to avoid grapefruit juice, and she ended up in terrible pain for weeks," added Ringel. "Warnings like that are written in small, technical English words, and patients who speak primarily Yiddish often can't read them, let alone understand them. Translated labels change that."

RxTran's recent white paper, "Pharmacy Language Access Is a Code-Red Problem," finds that a pharmacy can comply with every state prescription label law and still hand patients a label they can't read. More than 28 million U.S. residents have limited English proficiency. The report calls for "accountable language access," in which a qualified professional verifies every translated label and can stand behind it.

RxTran's pharmacists are available for interviews.

About RxTran
RxTran is a division of Language Scientific, Inc., the clinical, medical, and scientific language specialists. RxTran's patented Transduction technology (U.S. patents 11,836,454 and 12,602,554) provides pharmacist-verified prescription medication labeling in 27 languages. For more information, visit www.languagescientific.com or www.rxtran.com.

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SOURCE RxTran