Medical Translation Insight

Despite having existed for less than four years, the EuroTermBank project looks poised to succeed where many others have failed: Making a business case for terminology management and terminology sharing.

One of the reasons is that EuroTermBank (ETB), the "one-stop gateway to optimised term bank and top European terminology resources through a consolidated interface", is funded by the EU. This has allowed it to amass millions of terms covering a broad spectrum of subject fields and industries, spanning a multitude of languages, and coming from a wide range of terminology providers.

Similarly, ETB has done a good job focusing on technology to make its database usable. Rather than forcing users to employ a proprietary tool, ETB released an add-in for MS Word. Similarly, ETB links up with existing tool sets, like Kilgray's MemoQ.

It's also impressive to see ETB's robust business model that doesn't try to be all things to all users. The consortium that leads ETB has done a terrific job defining its target users. For a look at ETB's strategy check out this presentation from the 2007 LISA Forum Asia [PDF link].

Most importantly, though, ETB seems to have figured out how to manage terminology quality. Much of this looks to be the result having more and better user participation. For instance, by solving copyright issues, contributions are more frequent and of higher quality. Leveraging international standards also makes use of ETB and easier "sell".

EuroTermBank is well on its way to be become indispensable to all of us. As Jost Zetzsche said: you'd be silly not to use it.

[Thanks to Ruben de la Fuente for the Word add-in tip!]

Terminology management is such an important topic, and we regularly discuss processes and tools. Here is a recent sampling:

• Terminology management at Medtronic provides a real-world glimpse at how a large medical device companies manages multilingual terminology
• Low-cost terminology management makes the point that glossary management doesn't have to be complex or expensive
• TERMIUM is another large (and free!) terminology base

ForeignExchange Translations provides specialized medical translation and software localization services to drug and device companies. Contact us to learn more.
 
 

Thanks to the folks at Duncan Bucknell, we recently found out about CIELA. This "China IP Litigation Analysis" database contains close to 7,600 cases from 13 Chinese IP courts.

The tool's premise is straight-forward and useful:

CIELA is a free-to-use ... website enabling IP owners and their counsel to evaluate IP litigation venues across China. Users can obtain statistics on IP rulings for the whole of China or focus on specific courts. With CIELA it is possible to quickly see which Chinese courts award higher damages, or conclude cases more quickly compared to other jurisdictions.

Access is free of charge, and customized reports are reasonably priced. $500 buys a basic statistical report (with charts) giving details of particular cases or courts. Report with statistics on particular cases or courts, with commentary from a qualified practitioner, or with copies of reference judgments will run between $1,000 and $2,000.

If you are involved with IP in China, take a look at CIELA!


Looking for more Chinese intellectual property news? Check out some of our past posts:

• Chinese patent office launches new English website
• Massive new Chinese-English technical patent glossary from TIPO
• Patent translations - inherently risky?

ForeignExchange translates patents and other IP for medical device and pharmaceutical companies into Chinese and 40+ languages. Ask us for a detailed proposal on your next translation project.
 
 

It is hard to believe that one month of 2010 has already gone by. Here are our articles that got the most attention in January:

1. Sometimes English is not sexy but stupid - A word of caution to companies who think that English slogan will be universally understood
2. Terminology management at Medtronic - It interesting to see how large medical device companies manage their translation efforts
3. Crowdsourcing will hurt software localization firms - Are we seeing a fundamental shift away from software localization companies?
4. The world's worst interpreter? - Reason # 3,762 that it's not smart to skimp on professional interpreters (or translators)
5. Of email and cultural differences - Interesting...it turns out that email customs aren't universal

Looking for more great content? Take a look at our top articles for December and November. Happy reading!

Translation service providers are fundamentally in the project management and customer service business. If clients wanted to, they could take care of getting IFUs, clinical reports, and regulatory submissions translated themselves. Instead, drug and device companies contract with translation companies because they want to be able to focus on their core skills.

Newsfactor published Top 10 Best Ways To Scare Off Your Customers. While it was not written for translation services specifically, it might as well have been:

Unfortunately, customer care is still regarded by many as a costly activity or a burden on resources. Some organizations have already recognized the importance of customer care, and a few are very advanced in its practice. But often it seems that companies just don't care enough about their customers after the sale has been made.

Head on over to the article and make sure that you address these ten items.

For more advice around customer service, also take a look at Know thy customer.

[Hat tip to Jim Rooney's Twitter feed]


For a detailed proposal on your next clinical, regulatory, or marketing medical translation project, contact ForeignExchange Translations.
 
 

The current edition of Multilingual contains an interesting article. "Real costs of quality software translations" [PDF link] takes a look at how to improve the quality of software localization while, at the same time, reduce total localization costs and time line.

Henk Boxma, who wrote the article, knows a thing or two about software localization. After spending five years in Medtronic's software development and localization organizations, he now helps translation service providers and software developers improve their software localization practices.

So, we pay attention when an expert like Henk advocates that developers and service providers abandon the old time-quality-cost triangle ("you can have any two but never all three"). He makes a compelling argument for the inefficiency of this approach. Henk points out that due to limitations of the per-word localization pricing model, in-house testing by the customer represents a necessary and expensive part of the process, because:

How can someone deliver a good software translation quality when the inputs are not optimal? The only way to deliver quality in that situation is to expend an enormous effort on testing. You will literally need to test the quality into the product.

It's nice to see an article that contains specific recommendations for going beyond the time-quality-cost triangle. And it's always nice to see an article that echoes ForeignExchange's views on quality.


ForeignExchange's METRiQ quality system provides medical device and pharmaceutical companies with measurable, known software localization quality. To learn more, contact ForeignExchange Translations.