4 Tips on How to Go Global with a Medical Translation Service Provider
Author: Andreea Balaoiu
4 Tips on How to Go Global
with a Medical Translation Service Provider
Medical translation has been around for many years. Translators and interpreters have been providing medical translation services to the healthcare industry since they recognized the growing importance of communication in the medical world. However, not all translation agencies provide the same level of service.
There are no hard and fast rules that dictate the language in which a medical translation has to be done. Generally, the native language of the country where the medical company is based is what matters. However, if you’re a healthcare-related business, best practice dictates you should opt for a foreign language translation provider if it suits your business needs, possesses the relevant experience in this field, and is qualified to handle the project's complexity effectively.
Here are a few tips to guide you in choosing the most suitable Medical Service Provider:
1. Pick a provider who has been in the industry for at least 5 years and has experience working with your industry.
You can choose one that has experience in the industry and has a good reputation.
Outsource your translation needs to a professional medical translation service provider who has established relationships with all the major players in healthcare around the world.
Thus, when you will work with said professional medical translation service provider, you won’t need to worry about creating new relationships or developing new strategies for each country or region where you want to do business. Instead, you will focus on what matters most: delivering high-quality translations that will help improve patient outcomes by increasing compliance rates and improving communication between doctors and patients and all medical entities involved.
2. Inquire about Healthcare LSPs’ quality control methods and how they ensure that their translators provide high-quality work.
If you're an entrepreneur in this space, you may be wondering how to take advantage of the growing trend of medical translation, while also protecting your brand and maintaining high-quality translation standards.
The success or failure of a medical translation is always ensured by how exact and accurate the terminology is employed in relation to the context, as well as the level of knowledge and understanding of the subject field exhibited by the LSP (Linguistic Service Provider), as well as their awareness of what should or should not be translated.
According to the Project Management Institute Annual Report, Project Quality Management entails a series of processes and activities undertaken by a translation-performing organization to “determine quality policies, objectives, and responsibilities so that the project will satisfy the needs for which it was undertaken” (PMI, 2013, p. 227).
The major function of Quality Assurance is to ensure that all translation projects are completed on time and within budget. The first step in this process involves defining clear project goals from which all other aspects of the project can be measured. This includes clearly defined deliverables such as style guides or glossaries, and specific metrics such as the number of words translated per day or cost per word.
Applying this rule to Medical Translation Project Quality Management exclusively, the QA process would imply a complex translation ecosystem coordinated by Project Managers (PMs), Linguistic Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and QA Analysts performing in-depth quality control based on parameters of translation linguistic and stylistic accuracy, project, and language-specific key-metrics and UI/UX variables.
3. Be aware of cultural differences
While many medical records or documentation to be translated and localized will be written in English, it's important to consider cultural differences when working with other languages within the healthcare industry.
And of course, it goes without saying that in the field of medical translations complying with these official directives and regulations and effectively localizing the medical content to cater to target languages must also be doubled by an awareness of cultural sensitivities.
A savvy medical LSP or Localization company can adjust to any scenario in terms of linguistic output, as exhibiting an in-depth grounding in the two cultures involved in the translation process represents a key asset of any professional LSP specialized in the field.
One valuable example in this sense for the EU would be Estonia or Finland, which make a clear distinction between the professional and public user in its description and translation of medical labels, displaying text in both English or other languages for professional use and only in the local language for public use.
In Canada, the duality of English and French as official languages prompts translators and service providers of medical translation to abide by the guidelines for labelling medical devices, which require the bilingual rendition of the content for general consumption.
By contrast, the Asian market is more exclusive as Asian medical translation regulations for pharmaceutical labels in Japan and China have underlined the necessity of Japanese or Chinese-exclusive language content, submitted for approval by the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare (MHLW).
Over the last decade, China has risen as a considerable market and a valuable outlet for expanding medical devices and is currently competing arduously with the U.S., Germany, and Japan, running efficient and thorough assessments of their medical labelling in variations of Mandarin Chinese and other dialects to ensure the reliability of their medical content.
Therefore, each medical company needs to thoroughly localize their content into various languages that cater to the standards and requirements of the targeted markets, stressing the importance and value of LSPs that can provide custom-tailored linguistic solutions to their specific wants and needs, beyond any boundary.
4. Review your internal brand guidelines
If you are a company that hires translators to translate your medical documents into another language, you must review your brand guide or style guide before hiring any translators. These guides are designed to ensure consistency across all translated materials, so make sure that any translators you hire have read yours before starting work!
These guides are designed to ensure that all translated materials have the same tone, feel, and readability, so it's important that you're confident in any translator's ability to follow them before you start working together.
The Bottom Line
If you are a company that hires translators to translate your medical documents into another language, you must review your brand guide or style guide before hiring any translators. These guides are designed to ensure consistency across all translated materials, so make sure that any translators you hire have read yours before starting work!
These guides are designed to ensure that all translated materials have the same tone, feel, and readability, so it's important that you're confident in any translator's ability to follow them before you start working together.
