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As originally asked by Ms. Julia Lucietto.

Hello all members! I am a professional translator and I am creating this post to ask for your help to clarify some doubts on translation for medical market. I would be very happy if you can contribute with your opinion/experience.

When a file need to be translated, do you count on translation agencies, freelance translators or internal employees? Why?

Are you satisfied with your choice? What are your suggestions or complaints?

Thank you all in advance for your time.

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Joe Hage
🔥 Find me at MedicalDevicesGroup.net 🔥
I use Peter Argondizzo of Argo Translation.

Katalin Szilárd
DipTrans/LC – English-Hungarian Translation Expert in * Medical * Medical Device * Pharmaceutical * Law/Business fields
Post 2.

If you ask test translations from agencies, watch out: it can happen that some agencies ask translators who provide the best quality to do the test translations and then the agency hires low rate translators for the actual big job. This way they can have a bigger a profit. It happened with me before that an end client accidentally noticed my name in the test and they questioned the agency why another translator did the actual translation which had a bad quality. Fortunately not all translation agencies work like this. But be prepared!

And another myth to be busted: most translation agencies do not have internal staff to do the translations, they hire freelance translators. Their internal staff are usually project managers who assign projects to freelancers.

Katalin Szilárd
DipTrans/LC – English-Hungarian Translation Expert in * Medical * Medical Device * Pharmaceutical * Law/Business fields
Post 1. As Jana Černá mentioned hiring a translation agency doesn’t guarantee anything. They can buy ISO certifications and liabilities etc. but it doesn’t guarantee that they will hire the best quality translators. Those certifications and liabilities guarantee that they would do certain things according to the ISO or liabilities, but it doesn’t guarantee that the translators will have a real concrete professional knowledge and translation skills in that field. I remember what a hassle ISO monitoring can be at a hospital’s department: What is the temperature of the fridge where vaccines are stored? etc. But it never evaluated the real practical knowledge of physicians or nurses. It required certain qualifications, but as we know there are good and bad physicians with he same papers. Briefly: “The proof of the pudding is in the eating”. If you have the time, ask sample translation translations or paid test translations from freelance translators, check their terminology knowledge.

Katalin Szilárd
DipTrans/LC – English-Hungarian Translation Expert in * Medical * Medical Device * Pharmaceutical * Law/Business fields
Unfortunately my posts were evaluated and accepted in the wrong order.
So this way they had a different meaning, please, read them in this order:

“It is dangerous to ask…”
“I exactly know that if we hired…”
“With these methods they exactly know…”
” I have just realized that the…”

Debbie Irwin NYC Voice Actor
Company Owner at Debbie Irwin Voiceovers
The same concerns discussed here are applicable to the hiring of voice talent such as myself. Oftentimes, people will grab someone in the office to provide narration, but the skill, technical expertise, ability to take direction and/or self direct are just some of the benefits that a trained pro brings to the project.

When translating content into another language, like Spanish for example, the word count (and syllables within the words) can increase by 30%! This is a very important factor when localizing after a video has already been created, because the new narration won’t sink up with the original.

When it comes to technical translations, I hire Accredited Language Services in NYC. They’re great at what they do, and bring many levels of QC to the process.

Katalin Szilárd
DipTrans/LC – English-Hungarian Translation Expert in * Medical * Medical Device * Pharmaceutical * Law/Business fields
I have just realized that the “How to find a good translator?” link doesn’t work because I wrote that within the Certified PRO translators’ forum and it is not open for public.

But you can read it here as well:

“Tips for finding the right specialized translator” ->

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0ByZypjvKbwmjQlRVaDVZZF9tZnM/view?usp=sharing

Barb Sichel
Director Business Development, Translations at International Language Services, Inc.
Good discussion. There seems to be a tendancy to believe that in-house personnel are best qualified, because they know the products. But a professional translator who focuses on a specific industry is just as likely to understand your products and more likely to provide consistent translations over time because they also have the proper tools to manage projects. With professionals, there is usually also a commitment to a specific timeline and a process in place for verifying quality. Many of our best clients became frustrated after having projects delayed, while the in-house folks were doing their regular jobs. Or worse, after learning that the messaging was altered during translation, based on the preferences of their in-house or distributor’s personnel.

Katalin Szilárd
DipTrans/LC – English-Hungarian Translation Expert in * Medical * Medical Device * Pharmaceutical * Law/Business fields
“I exactly know that if we hired translators directly after a careful and strict evaluation we would receive far better and more accurate translations for less money since I know that 2 translators do all translation process steps (translation, editing, QA, client review and creating TMs), but the executives of our company are not ready for such an innovative change even though there are far better options. We need to work with big translation agencies and I exactly know that usually they provide supermarket quality for a lot of money.”

On the other hand there are companies where they realized this problem and they are open to step off the beaten path: they realized if they want to be sure that they receive high quality: 1) either they hire project managers who hire freelance translators or 2) they establish a whole translation department within their company that evaluates and hires freelance translators.

Katalin Szilárd
DipTrans/LC – English-Hungarian Translation Expert in * Medical * Medical Device * Pharmaceutical * Law/Business fields
With these methods they exactly know who translates their documents, so they can be more sure about quality and also confidentiality is more secured, since the less parties are involved in a document translation process the bigger the chance for keeping confidentiality.

Tips:

If you prefer hiring directly translators, I recommend to use this directory:
http://www.proz.com/translator-directory/

How to find a good translator?

http://www.proz.com/forum/certified_pro_network/312283-new_feature_pools_groups_of_screened_experts-page4.html#2632882

If you prefer to hire translation agencies, I recommend to check them on these lists:
Black list of translation agencies: http://translationethics.blogspot.hu/p/blog-page.html
Proz Blue Board (payment is needed): http://www.proz.com/blueboard/
LinkedIn Group: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/3415770 Unacceptable Translation Rates Naming & Shaming Group
Payment practices (payment is needed): www.paymentpractices.net/

Katalin Szilárd
DipTrans/LC – English-Hungarian Translation Expert in * Medical * Medical Device * Pharmaceutical * Law/Business fields
It is dangerous to ask someone within the company to do the translation just because he/she is bilingual. Translation is a profession, being a bilingual person doesn’t make someone a translator. Understanding a text and interpreting it accurately, fluently and creating new terms are 2 different things. Furthermore there is a rule, you have to keep in mind: documents should be translated always by a professional who lives in the target country: because she/he will be up-to-date with the recent terminology and laws in the target country.

Due to an outdated bureaucratic policy many medical device companies don’t hire translators directly, because of ISO or other compliancies. So due to legal reasons they hire (usually big) translation agencies. I recently had a conversation with a company about this. The person who deals with translations in his company said:

Andrew Keirns
RWS Sr. Director Business Development
Outsourcing is good, and what makes medical device clients contact me is that my team will proactively reach a clients internal reviewers to get their buy-in, tone, glossary, and style.
We are also certified to both ISO 13485 and ISO 14971 as well as Notified Body-endorsed which pulls
both process and content risk out of a project.
Ping me – I’d love to learn more about your objectives and requirements.

Andrew Keirns
RWS Sr. Director Business Development
My team excels because we reach out to a clients internal reviewers to get their glossary and style and Buy-in.
We are also notified body-endorsed which, in addition to ISO 13485 and ISO 14971, pulls both process and content risk from each project.
Ping me-I’d love to learn more about your objectives and requirements

Denise Moore-Contreras
Neuro-Crani Specialty Medical Device Consultant
Internal employees because of convenience and ease.

Carlos Viera-Tirado
What can I do for you today? Got Knowledge, Expertise, Creativity. Let’s work together to do it right the first time.
To my understanding, procedures shall be in place to define who will be performing the translation task and who it should be certificate for accuracy . Have seen some clients using certified translators (outsourcing), but other have internal personnel (certified in the specified language) due to the volume of the business.

Jo Huang, RAC
Senior Regulatory Affairs Specialist at Argon Medical Devices, Inc.
For easy tasks, internal employees will do; otherwise, e.g muilti-lang IFU’s we have established translation providers who help leverage the translation memory to keep cost down.

Jana Černá
Regulatory Affairs – MEDKONSULT medical technology
This is an issue I am currently dealing with at work. We have been hiring an agency but recently I have become unsatisfied with their work. The agency commits in the agreement to give our tasks solely to translators who are experienced in the field of medicine/medical devices. However, looking at the last translation, no professional familiar with this business would deliver a translation with an incorretly translated headline. (It took me one or two minutes to google the correct terms even in languages I don’t speak.)

The best possible option would be to have an entire translation department as suggested above by Katalin but our company is too small to afford it. And we need translation to almost all European languages. So I am currently looking for freelancers. So far, I have received around 100 CVs and approximately half of them was sent by highly qualified translators.

Irma Calderón Woodruff
Laser Technology Enthusiast
My sister, Olga Calderon, was a translator for AT&T for 10 years AND has been a translator for WellMed for another 10 years. She is not on LinkedIn, but sure she would be happy to answer any questions you may have. Her number is 210-478-1808. She knows medical translations!

Silvia Fuster Bartomeu
Regulatory Affairs Pharmacist
Hello Julia. We alwayscount on translation agencies because it is the easy and fast way we have found to get the file!

Cinde Waller
*LION* President and Founder of TempOrthotics, Inc.
Freelance translator. More ‘one on one’ and personal, in my opinion. I also use a freelance web designer. Very satisfied for five years now. Thanks.

Jana Černá
Regulatory Affairs – MEDKONSULT medical technology
As we have documentation both in Czech and English and it would be almost impossible to find such qualification among translators from Czech to, for instance, Hungarian, Swedish, Finnish, etc., these translators translate from English and are residents of countries other than the Czech Republic. And here comes the problem. I need to sign a contract with them and the contract will have to comply with the national legislation of a given state, I guess. And the other problem – a part of the contract with the translation agency was professional liability insurance. Translators from some countries responded that there was no such thing as professional liability insurance for translators. And that they would simply wouldn’t sign anything which would hold them responsible to financially participate in covering of a financial loss caused by wrong translation. And it gives me headache because I need and want these translators as I realize all the advantages.

Nana Ryu
Product Development Manager at Aimvein Medical
Internal employees are our first choice. Because they are more familiar to our products, making the translation more accurate and it is convenient. When the content is difficult for our employees, we turn to certified translators.

Dale Shelton
Business Development Director at OpGen, Inc.
Agencies because they are simply a one stop shop for all languages required. They can vary in quality though. I used McFelder Translations and was very pleased.

Risa H.
Sales manager | Relationship builder | Market developer | Entrepreneur | 12 y experience| Benelux | EMEA | FT Available
I work many years international and have many experience with medical translation. Big company’s have people inside, they translate self,the end control happened trough the technical department. Because is not easy to find someone can deliver a text with perfect grammar and at the same time using the right specific technical therms. Another issue is that many people trying to translate thinking in own native language.
I have also experience with freelance. She was very good! Sometime small mistakes. I do the final control through a college with thechnical background and born in the country ( language request).

Ilana Zigelman
Regulatory Compliance Consultant
I have found that verification of a translation significantly reduces the number of errors and is well worth the additional cost and time

Jose F. Gomez
Intl. Business Development Executive●Latin America●B2B Sales●Distrib. Channels●Brand Ambassador
Great comments and insights. I just wanted to add my experience.
Internal personnel usually does not deliver quality translations and they may well be doing something else.
Outsourced , whether agency or freelance, they better be more technical and deliver better grammar and vocabulary; I’ve seen all sorts. When we find the right one we stick to it.
A final note, when translating into Spanish, make sure that you use the most widely accepted term to refer to devices or procedures, there might be some variations from one country to another. That revision for “neutrality” might cost as much as the translation itself.

Brigitte Chantrelle
Directrice de Clientèle at JOHN LIBBEY EUROTEXT LIMITED
We work with an agency.

Matthew McGugan
Sales Associate US Federal Sales at Check Point Software Technologies, Ltd.
Hi all. I thought this could possibly be helpful. The Xerox® Healthcare
Multi function Printer Solution, connected by Kno2™, helps meet each of these challenges by solving the problem of secure sharing of patient information from one provider to another across the healthcare continuum. Xerox also offers a “Easy Translator” App that can translate documents in one of 55 different languages. Meaning you can translate your documents before securely sending them through the Kno2 MFP. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Glenn Luchen
Retired
Third party versed in the technical medical terms related to the device.

Uwe Frenz Dr.
quality management and test developer bei GETEMED AG
Hi all,
we’re doing translations by hiring professional translation services. But we’ve had some troubles with this, as the specific translator obviously did not know the correct technical terms in both languages, which results in -sometimes funny- translations.
Also, the very same text does not always result in the very ‘wordy’ same translation. Which can be a problem with things like the intended use.
At this time we utilize a database for phrases, even whole sections, of our base language. For each of these phrases we get and improve and finalize translated phrases and keep them as long as possible.
This works for manuals, other labeling and even localized stings within SW-based products.
Just my € 0.02!

Vanessa Rivel
RAC │ Senior Quality Professional │Regulatory Compliance, Quality Systems & Quality Operations │ ASQ CBA Instructor
Translation companies that are specialized in medical devices. But I review and approve translated documents because they have technical jargon the translator may not be familiar with.

Aaron Liang
Watson Health Quality Analyst at IBM
I think it depends on the type of materials. In medical devices, much of the material being translated are subject to audits or regulatory scrutiny such as product technical documentation, marketing materials and labeling. Given the attention those kinds of materials are placed under, from my experience generally organizations will go to a certified translator (I believe there is an ISO standard for translation services) or to a designated internal employee/group for added assurance. Another reason to use certified agencies or internal staff is also for information security and integrity because of the sensitivity of the materials in question.

Danielle Lindner
Regulatory Affairs
All of the above. For very important documents (like an IFU) we will initiate the multilingual translations project with an agency. That agency should operate in compliance with EN 15038. Depending on the company, there would also be an in-house review. Large companies can afford to keep professional linguists on staff.

However, for any other file (declaration statements, marketing material, submission content) I could see the value in having a freelancer over an agency.

John Mitchell
Customer Insights and Innovation Expert, President & Managing Principal, Applied Marketing Science, Inc., CCXP
As a market research consultant, I rely on 3rd party translators to handle translation of surveys, discussion guides, transcripts, etc. All of my medical clients are global companies with plenty of bilingual staff, but the time required for a quality translation is often more than they can spare. It is a much better use of time and money to have a professional translator handle it (but we always check translations with native speakers on our clients’ teams).

We work with translation agency that provides quick turnaround on documents in nearly every language we could ask for (major European and Asian languages). They have specific expertise in clinical terminology and idiom.…see more

Vanessa Rivel
RAC │ Senior Quality Professional │Regulatory Compliance, Quality Systems & Quality Operations │ ASQ CBA Instructor
I need translation into Spanish and I use translation agencies with experience in medical devices. However in the end is my responsibility to review and approve the translation. Some documents have a lot of technical jargon.

Allen Scholnick
Retired from Abbott Labs
I have been involved in translations since for over 20 years and we have a dedicated group of translators doing the translations for all our products. This works very well for us however the company I work for is very large and we can afford this luxury.

Kalaiarasan Jayaraman
SEEKING JOB FOR BIOMEDICAL ENGINEER/ MEDICAL EQUIPMENT’S REPAIRER
hi all
if you believe the translators are good and professional . you don’t worry about what you want say to the patient.. our hospital we have lot of translator working in our organisation like 10 person s..
the translation language could not able to understand to the end user totally waste of our efforts..

Rajeev Vishwakarma
Manager – Research at E-Merge tech Global Services Pvt Ltd
we are experienced in doing such work. it will be helpful if you can elaborate on that a bit.
Best regards,
Rajeev