Medical Translation Insight

As we recently noted, crowdsourcing translation is all the rage. And despite some challenges with the model, many companies deploy it effectively.

And then there is LinkedIn. Its offer to reward translators through badges, account updates, or just good ol' karma created a firestorm among linguists, gave rise to the group Translators against Crowdsourcing by Commercial Businesses, and, yesterday, got its own article in the New York Times.

Now that kind of bad publicity is bound to slow LinkedIn's reach within the language service business.

But I think there is a positive ending in this for all parties concerned: For LinkedIn, hopefully any publicity is good publicity. And for translators, it could be a lot worse.


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I have often observed how an email request sent to ten people simultaneously will generate few responses but that separate emails sent to ten people individually will result in many more replies.

Pete Abilla's shmula blog had a terrific post over the weekend explaining this phenomenon: "Reply All" and the Bystander Problem. The post provides several startling examples of the bystander effect and provides good advice on how to overcome it:

1. Address only the relevant people in an email – and not too many people
2. Address, by name, the person to whom you are requesting advice, help, or approval
3. Be clear, concise, and make your request explicit — do not leave the recipient guessing

This is terrific advice for anybody needing questions answered via email!


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The term "Yugoslavia" literally means "South Slavia". It encompasses three different political bodies that existed successively on the Balkan Peninsula from 1918-2002.

While the exact borders of Yugoslavia varied over the years, at its height (1943-1991) it consisted of the republics of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Slovenia, Montenegro, and Macedonia. The official language of this region was Serbo-Croatian; however, Slovenian and Macedonian remained spoken in their respective zones.

Today, each of these republics is a country of its own. Each has its own eponymous language. The evolution of these languages has been greatly impacted by the complicated political history of the area and, while most of these languages are now "official", they are not all standardized.

There are many similarities and differences between these languages and, whether each language has been recently recognized or its identity is more deeply rooted, the formation of these modern idioms has demonstrated the inherent historical link between society, politics, and language.

ForeignExchange Translations provides specialized Croatian translation services to pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Contact us to learn more.

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Guest article:
By Roomy Naqvy
Gujarati-English-Hindi translator
Contact him via proz.com and the ATA


In response to B.J. Epstein's post on why she doesn't take on medical translation assignments, I would like to post some of my own, very positive experiences in this field.

I started out as a literary translator, got published, got accolades, then translated lots of cuisine texts and then suddenly found myself translating medical texts. I never thought it was forbidding. I have translated a large number of medical texts for the last few years.

Once I was translating a numbered list from English into Gujarati, where the English read, "Have you had a history of the following: heart attack, cardiac arrest?" I had seven Gujarati dictionaries at my house, and still I was stumped. Gujarati dictionaries define both as "attack on the heart" but "cardiac arrest" is different. I struggled for an hour and then translated "cardiac arrest" as "the stoppage of the heart".

In other instances, sometimes, when I edit Hindi translations, many translators use the word for stomach while describing the abdomen, primarily because Indians tend to be a conservative culture, and they use "body" words infrequently.

I find these examples fascinating. To me, they represent a challenge which is similar to translating literary or cuisine texts and keep me enjoying medical translation work.

The cost of translating, localizing, and adapting content, whether in labeling, training, regulatory or marketing, usually ends up being directly proportional to the lack of forethought during the authoring phase.

Here are a few tips - some obvious, some not - that you can use now to see immediate returns in your translation budgets and timelines:

• Stay away from humor
• Avoid idiomatic expressions, references to local current events, sports references, etc.
• Carefully consider tone
• Avoid too much content on each page
• Minimize the number of graphics that contain text
• Make content consistent
• Be sensitive to cultural differences

For more actionable information, download ForeignExchange's related white paper E-learning without borders.


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The current issue of DIA's Global Forum contains an interesting article entitled "Drug Development in a Multicultural Environment".

One of the interesting things in the article is the included list of sample disease incidence, severity differences, and preventive treatment trends among U.S. Hispanics:

• Hispanics have higher incidences of stomach and liver cancer
• Cervical cancer is twice as prevalent in Hispanic women
• Hispanics are significantly less likely to visit a doctor
• AIDS cases are 3.5 times higher among Hispanics than non-Hispanic whites

Nonetheless, the fact remains: even though huge opportunities exist for drug companies in multicultural markets like the U.S., pharmaceutical and medical device companies generally stay away from marketing to Hispanics and other minority groups.


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The In Vivo Blog posted a question that everyone who follows small-company press releases should read: When Is a Billion Dollars Not a Billion Dollars?, they ask.

The post deals with the practice of announcing new deals/partnerships with huge dollar values attached to them - with little attention paid to the likelihood of all the stars aligning perfectly, so that these windfalls can occur.

One of the commentators on the In the Pipeline blog mentioned that his old company even had a formal plan for this:

We called these biobucks at my last place, and they were actually included in milestones- We want to sign deals this year for $100M in biobucks and $10M in real money, etc.

The same practice is alive and well in our little industry - just check out press releases 1, 2, and 3.

The numbers are a bit smaller but the principle is the same: throw around big numbers to impress casual investors and unsophisticated clients. And rest quietly knowing that nobody will hold you to those numbers anyway...


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The International Medical Interpreters Association just announced details of their 2009 medical interpreting conference.

This should be a great event. The 2008 conference was attended by more than 700 spoken language and ASL medical interpreters, language coaches, risk management professionals, healthcare workers, and language service providers.

This year's event will be held October 9 to 11, 2009, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Details are available on the IMIA web site. (And while you're there, check out IMIA's Guide on Translation.)


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TM sharing is all the rage.

Now TAUS, long a proponent of sharing translation memory ("TM") content across industry players, has released their TAUS Data Association language data exchange portal.

As of today, TDA's web site lists 29 member companies, split roughly down the middle between translation suppliers and buyers. To be sure, there are some large companies on this list. The TAUS team's hard work to enlist members has clearly paid off.

At the same time, there remain serious questions regarding usefulness and intellectual property.

The former, usefulness, is limited right now but will undoubtedly improve with time. There are limited language combinations, industries and domains. Also, the content seems to be of, shall we say, "mixed quality".

A language search for "pop-up blocker" brought up different results for "computer hardware" and "computer software" industries. More disconcerting is the fact that the combined ten segments displayed are inconsistent, contain typos and non-printable characters, and some are clearly specific to the companies that provided them.

These same issues exist in traditional TMs as well. However, with traditional TMs, the user is more or less in control of the data. We generally have a sense of the source, quality, and appropriateness for different TMs and segments.

With a shared TM, we know almost nothing about the origins and quality of the data. It's hard to imagine how this would enhance the translation throughput or quality.

In part, that's because of the above-mentioned intellectual property concerns. While software companies might not be concerned about sharing their content, it's hard to imagine drug and device companies endorsing this practice.

Similarly, do the language service providers participating in this effort have the right to share TM segments with third parties? I can't speak for other translation companies, of course, but at ForeignExchange, we wouldn't do this even for clients where we explicitly own the TMs.

And why would we want to? Currently, there is no medical industry/domain and the data quality would have to be substantially better before this would make sense to consider.

Nonetheless, TDA does represent a substantial step forward in the translation business. It demonstrates that innovation is possible, that clients and suppliers can work together, and that it's possible to develop solutions, not just tweak services or add to tool features. And for all of that, congratulations to TAUS!


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Three-and-a-half years ago, Daiichi Pharma won a patent lawsuit against Mylan. Specifically, the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit has affirmed the validity of Daiichi's U.S. patent no. 5,053,407 on levofloxacin, prohibiting Mylain from producing a generic version of levofloxacin until the expiration of Daiichi's patent.

Patent Baristas reported that in the aftermath to the lawsuit a tussle broke out over translation fees that Daiichi incurred and wanted Mylan to pay for.

And we're not talking a pittance here - $1.3 million in translation fees were at stake. The court's decision ensured that Daiichi wasn't "double-dipping" on it's cost recovery efforts. More details at the Patent Barista blog and in decision Ortho-McNeil Pharma v. Mylan Labs (08-1600) of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.


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Who knew that Yoda was in the business of translating from French to German?

The translation detectives at the Übersetzungsfehler blog found this sign at the Rhine-Rhône Canal near Montbéliard, France. "Roulez lentement" means "Drive slowly". The German translation, however, is incomprehensible in a Yoda type of way and would be cute if it might not lead to traffic jams and worse among the drifting house boats.

So, there you have it: Reason number 1,472 to hire a professional translator for your high-visibility signs.


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The RAPS Focus article that we mentioned in our post on multi-country regulatory filing strategy also contains interesting details on the appeal of Latin America for clinical researchers (login required).

The authors mention seven reasons why medical device and pharmaceutical companies continue to make Latin America on of the "big three" emerging research markets:

1. Quality and trust - Researchers have found GCP quality of clinical in Latin America (as in other emerging markets) to be as good as the quality of traditional regions. In addition, a 20-year history of "orderly conduct of trials" has inspired trust in local regulations.
2. Reverse seasons - The fact that it is summer in Argentina and Chile when it is winter in the U.S., Europe, and Japan helps speed-up the development of drugs that treat seasonal diseases.
3. Cost - The authors estimate that the cost of a typical Latin American trials is 20%-25% less than the cost of a U.S. trial.
4. Geography - Because time zones overlap with the U.S., contact between site staff and a U.S.-based R&D organization is easy.
5. Language - Latin America's language homogeneity (there are only two major languages, Spanish and Portuguese) make it an easy place to conduct trials.
6. Hispanic ethnic group - As the largest minority group in the U.S., hispanics are an important market for drug and device companies. And that, in turn, makes Latin America an attractive and representative locale for clinical research.
7. Market access - By conducting trials in a country, device and drug companies can launch new products faster and more predictably in that country.

While not everybody might agree with the trend to globalize clinical trials, with advantages like these, Latin America's importance in clinical research is sure to grow further.


For expert medical translations of regulatory, clinical, and marketing content in 40 languages - including Spanish - request a detailed proposal from ForeignExchange Translations.
 
 

The current issue of RAPS Focus contains an interesting article on how drug companies can use a strategic, multinational approach (PDF link) to greatly increase the chance of marketplace success for both new and existing pharmaceutical products.

At the heart of such a strategy is the Common Technical Document (CTD).
Thanks to ICH M4 guidelines (PDF link), the CTD provides a standardized structure for regulatory submissions across all ICH member countries and, following adoption of a similar ACTD format, across ASEAN countries as well.

Although the CTD is fairly standardized around the globe, there exist significant differences in regulatory filings in the EU, U.S., and other countries and trading blocks. The authors make a good argument for the importance of local knowledge. Their experience has shown that "knowledge of regulatory differences and other country-specific requirements is crucial to the success of any multi-country submissions strategy."

With ever-increasing time-to-market pressures, pharmaceutical companies are increasing their efforts to understand these regional differences and build robust CTDs.


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We recently talked about back translations, first from the perspective of how/if they add value and then taking a look at how to tackle issues of discrepancy in meaning. Both posts generated good comments, most of them of the "back translations are not a good way to assess quality" type.

When translating health-related quality of life documents (HRQoL) or patient reported outcome (PRO) measures such as patient diaries, not only are back translations non-negotiable, they are also much more involved than a simple "backwards translation".

A group of the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research (ISPOR) in 2005 evaluated a dozen guidelines concerning the translation of PROs. The group concluded that poorly translated measures threaten the validity of clinical research. ISPOR then set out to rectify the situation by proposing a robust and standardized process for producing translated measures and instruments that are fully validated.

ISPOR's Principles of Good Practice for the Translation and Cultural Adaptation Process for Patient-Reported Outcomes (PRO) Measures (PDF link) outlines this ten-step process:

1. Preparation;
2. Forward Translation;
3. Reconciliation;
4. Back Translation;
5. Back Translation Review;
6. Harmonization;
7. Cognitive Debriefing;
8. Review of Cognitive Debriefing Results and Finalization;
9. Proofreading; and
10. Final Report.

Beyond the focus on preparation and harmonization, what is unique about ISPOR's approach is that the forward as well as the back translations are performed by two separate translators, working in parallel. Their work is then harmonized and the harmonized back translation is reviewed with the source text.

While this process might seem like overkill, it is, in fact, the only standardized means to produce fully validated translations. And in the case of clinical trials where hundreds of millions of dollars may be at stake, $20,000 in additional translation costs is nothing compared to potentially invalid research findings.


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In Europe, medical equipment manufacturers are now faced with the need to localize the software used to run and program their devices. For larger companies like Siemens Healthcare or Medtronic, the new requirements have not really changed anything -- these companies have already been localizing software (although maybe they supported fewer languages).

It is smaller device manufacturers who bear the brunt of the new EU requirements. In these companies, application development was rarely designed, built, and tested with wide-ranging locale requirements in mind. As a result, there is often an expensive surprise waiting when it comes time to translate or simply support user data like complex character sets, sorting, and variable formatting.

Cultural differences in expressing things like dates and times, numerical units, postal addresses, phone numbers, and currencies represent a whole new level of difficulty. However, as seasoned software localizers know, when internationalization is performed effectively, software can be quickly leveraged for any worldwide market opportunity.

Adam Asnes of software-internationalization house Lingoport recently led two audio conferences to help medical device and other manufacturers get started with software internationalization.

Developing software for global markets provides a good overview of software internationalization issues. Best Practices for Software Internationalization gets into more details and provides hands-on, actionable advice to engineering and localization managers.


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Switzerland is on a tight schedule toward eCTD implementation. As reported by The eCTD Summit, swissmedic is now looking for companies to participate in a pilot project (mdules 1 to 5).

Other key points from the announcement are:

• the electronic submission will be in addition to a paper submission
• pilots will be conducted from 1 June to 31 August 2009
• the submission process and timeline will not be altered by the pilot project

So, if your company is interested in participating, contact the SIMES project leader mentioned in the swissmedic announcement.


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Traditional vs. simplified characters. Mandarin vs. Cantonese dialects. How do you tell one from the other?

The Language Log has a good post on the widely believed myth that forms of Chinese that are mutually incomprehensible in their spoken forms are identical in writing.

To examine this issue, the post looks at linguistic issues between Cantonese and Mandarin. It's conclusion?

Like many myths, the myth that the many forms of Chinese are identical in writing is false but has a kernel of truth. That kernel of truth is that someone who can read one form of Chinese has a fairly easy time learning to read another.

Check out the comments as well. There are interesting comments regarding differences between Chinese and Japanese, Chinese neologisms, and a reference to the book Cantonese As Written Language: The Growth of a Written Chinese Vernacular.


ForeignExchange provides Chinese medical translation services to leading drug and device companies. Contact us to find out more!
 
 

Broken English is the language of the world... Sure it's easy to make fun of embarrassing translation blunders but we all need a good snicker every once in a while.

The folks at Silicon Strat pointed us to Signspotting.com. The site features hilarious English signs found in non-English speaking countries.

Rate a sign so that you can advance to the next one. You can enter captions and view signs in different categories. Singspotting.com also offers a monthly mailing list. Head on over there and have a laugh or two!


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May was another good month at the Medical Translation Blog - more readers, more content, and more comments than ever!

To see what you missed over the past month, check out May's most popular posts:

1. Will crowdsourcing change the translation business? - "Crowdsourcing" is all the rage, including in the translation world.


2. 6 reasons NOT to translate your web site - Nothing attracts attention like a bit of controversy :-).


3. Medical Spanish podcast - Many of our readers are freelance translators, and they appreciate learning about new resources like this one.


4. Translator comic strip - "Mox the translator" proved to be very popular with medical translators.


5. To all the folks who say that English is easy - Everybody likes a good laugh at (mis)translations.

Happy reading and happy weekend!

Localization World Berlin is finished, and it ended on a high note. Our quality session on Wednesday attracted about 120 people and the three panelists kept the audience entertained and informed.

Some of the high points included:

• discussion around objective (e.g., grammar) vs. subjective (e.g., meeting customer requirements) quality;
• how to build quality into the process early;
• business opportunities around "quality" - clients can save time and money, suppliers can proactively offer new solutions, standards are urgently needed;
• computer-aided proofreading (CAP) via off-the-shelf and custom-built tools.

The discussion around CAP tools was particularly interesting. While CAP tools have been around for 20 years, they used to be limited to spell checkers, grammar checkers, and find-and-replace tools.

Not any more. Today, tools like ApSIC XBench, QA Distiller and Error Spy offer the ability to remove much of monotony from proofreading tasks by checking numbers, spaces, terminology adherence, formatting, and much more. While humans do a better job at proofreading, few people like proofreading. At a minimum, these tools allow translation service providers to work more efficiently.

Michal's company C&M Localization Center has taken CAP several steps further. C&M has developed a CAP toolkit that is file-format agnostic and is optimized for use with Slavic languages - something the other tools struggle with. It sounded very impressive!

During the discussion it became apparent again that the TEP model (translate, edit, proofreading) is dead. Today's reality is shrinking budgets and timelines that require a better use of technology and a realization that translation quality is not an absolute but rather that different quality levels are needed for different kinds of texts, formats, and situations.


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One of the folks that I met at Monday's Medical Localization Roundtable was Patricia Tavira of The Institute of Localisation Professionals (TILP). She mentioned to me that TILP is launching the Level 1 Certified Localisation Professional program for 2009.

After talking to Patricia, this sounds like a terrific education program to learn the ins and outs of software and web localization. For the bargain price of EUR 200 to 800 per person (price varies depending on the onsite course location), attendees receive:

• Extensive online course materials, and
• A four-day instructor-led onsite course in one of 12 countries, and
• Free licenses to Catalyst, TRADOS, and Passolo, and
• Free membership to TILP.

Now that's what I call an excellent deal!

So, if you've always wanted to learn more about internationalization and localization of software and web sites, hurry and register for one of the upcoming events. For more information, Patricia offered to answer any questions.


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As mentioned in the run-up to the event, yesterday's Medical Localization Roundtable at Localization World Berlin 2009 took on a slightly different format. We had three different sessions that addressed different topics.

Given travel budget cuts, the day was well attended with approximately 35 people coming to the medical events. All three sessions produced good discussions among the attendees - a good mix of clients, service providers, and academics. It was great to meet blog readers Betty and Anna!

One of the day's highlights was the two-part presentation on usability and readability testing by Brigitte Herrmann of Siemens Healthcare and Simon Andriesen of MediLingua.

Brigitte's presentation gave a terrific overview of why and how Siemens Healthcare invests in usability testing for their medical software and hardware. She also walked through some of the research by usability guru Jakob Nielsen on how any organization can benefit from usability testing with as few as 3 testers.

Simon's talk focused on the updated European readability testing guideline: why its content-based approach is superior to metrics-based approaches, how readability testing has helped improve usability of drug patient information leaflets (PiL), and specifics on how to organize readability testing - not just for PiLs but for any type of translation.

And on top of a terrific conference day, Berlin's friendliness alert has paid off - I have yet to encounter a rude person in the Millennium City.


Where else did you read a report on the Medical Localization Roundtable? To stay informed, subscribe to Medical Translation Blog via email or RSS!

Trademarks – Protection For Foreign Language Equivalents, published in the Ottawa Business Journal last week, provides a look at three recent Canadian trademark cases that highlights the issue of translation in trademark registration.

The issues are not restricted to Canada though, and impact companies in any industry, including pharmaceuticals. Pfizer, for instance, was on the losing end of a lawsuit involving translation issues in its attempt to register ENVACAR in China.

In the U.S., the doctrine of foreign equivalents requires courts and the Trademark Opposition Board to translate foreign words in determining whether they are registrable as trademarks, or confusingly similar with existing marks.

A good overview of the doctrine, replete with real-world examples and case law, can be found in Sujata Chaudhri's article, which appeared in the January/February 2007 New York Intellectual Property Law Association (NYIPLA) Bulletin.


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Everybody loves to have a good laugh at a mistranslation.

For years, marketing "experts" have claimed that the reason the Chevy Nova failed in Spanish-speaking countries is that "no va" is Spanish for "doesn't go." But just because lots of people like telling this story doesn't make it true.

Sometimes these myths are true (as with the Electrolux example) but especially the most commonly told ones are usually false.

Just because the Nova anecdote isn't true doesn't mean that this isn't a big issue. Like GM did with the Buick LaCrosse in Canada, companies sometimes do change product names in a specific market in an effort to avoid a bad connotation. More often, companies don't change the product name, even though they should really consider it.

In addition to the excellent book Another One Bites The Grass that we mentioned recently, here are a handful of other resources that will prevent your company from becoming the next Chevy Nova story:

• The Culture Code: An Ingenious Way to Understand Why People Around the World Live and Buy as They Do


• Brand Failures: The Truth about the 100 Biggest Branding Mistakes of All Time


• Classic Failures in Product Marketing: Marketing Principles Violations and How to Avoid Them


• Culture Clash: Managing the Global High-Performance Team

For expert medical translations of regulatory, clinical, and marketing content in 40 languages - including Spanish - request a detailed proposal from ForeignExchange Translations.
 
 

As we like to do once a month, we review the top audio conference events for the last 30 days.

May provided some really excellent topics. The top five events were:

1. Adaptive/Novel Designs in Oncology: Overview & Issues


2. EMEA & Risk Management: What You Need to Know


3. ASTM F 2575-06: A Practical Guide for Achieving Translation Quality


4. Communicating Complex Technical Information to Non-Technical Audiences


5. Optimizing Your Chemistry, Manufacturing & Control Program

If you have any suggestions for audio conference topics, send us a note!

FDA recently issued a warning letter to General Mills, makers of Cheerios(R) breakfast cereal. The warning letter raps The Mills on the knuckles for illegally marketing their new "drug," commonly known as Cheerios(R) Toasted Whole Grain Oat Cereal.

What, Cheerios(R) is a drug?

Yes, because according to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, a "drug" includes "articles intended for use in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease in man or other animals..." That's relevant because the product label stated that you can lower your cholesterol 4% in six weeks.

Interestingly, the claim referenced by FDA did not appear on the Cheerios(R) box, but rather appeared a General Mills web site, www.wholegrainnation.com. According to the FD&C Act, "[t]he term 'labeling' means all labels and other written, printed, or graphic matter (1) upon any article or any of its containers or wrappers, or (2) accompanying such article". Because General Mills' claims appeared on a web site featured on the Cheerios(R) box, the FDA considered the content on the web site as part of the labeling.

Warning letters are no laughing matter, and historically, regulators and courts have taken an expansive view of what is included in a product's labeling.

And it's not just nutritional products that are impacted. The latest version of the Medical Device Directive 2007/47/EC broadened the definition of "medical device" to include software that is intended for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. This means many medical device manufacturers are rushing to localize software so that their products can retain the CE Mark.

In a statement, General Mills said "the dispute with the FDA is more about language than science".

Now, where is the milk to add to my breakfast drug cocktail?


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The translation-quality panel discussion during next week's Localization World promises to be an interesting discussion. Unfortunately, one of the panelists, Marie Hanabusa, had to withdraw at the last moment.

The materials she was going to talk through were interesting. One of the items from her presentation was a look at the differences between quality assurance and quality control.

Here is how different sources distinguish between QA and QC:

Merriam-Webster says...

QA is "a program for the systematic monitoring and evaluation of the various aspects of a project, service, or facility to ensure that standards of quality are being met."

QC is "an aggregate of activities (as design analysis and inspection for defects) designed to ensure adequate quality especially in manufactured products."

According to Wikipedia...

QA is "the prevention of defects, such as by the deployment of a quality management system and preventative activities."

QC is "the detection of defects, most commonly associated with testing which takes place within a quality management system..."

Here is what Businessdictionary.com thinks...

QA is "often used interchangeably with quality control (QC), it is a wider concept that covers all policies and systematic activities implemented within a quality system."

QC is "a subset of QA, it comprises of [sic] activities employed in detection and measurement of the variability in the characteristics of output attributable to the production system, and includes corrective responses."

And, finally, according to Kent State's Institute for Applied Linguistics [PDF link]...

QA is "evaluating overall project performance on a regular basis to provide confidence that the project will satisfy the relevant quality standards."

QC is "monitoring specific project results to determine if they comply with relevant quality standards and identifying ways to eliminate causes of unsatisfactory performance."

Our panel discussion at Localization World will look at how we can get value from quality efforts - as opposed to it being a death march. If you're in Berlin, be sure to stop by!


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The case for and against direct update of TM's by translators is an interesting article at the Localization Best Practices blog.

Noting that all translation service providers are looking to reduce any and all costs that they possibly can, the post wonders whether the practice of multiple translators simultaneously working off of a central translation memory ("TM") is compatible with the blog's assertion of an industry best practice of refraining "from TM update until after linguistic QA, and if possible until after client review".

In a related discussion on LinkedIn, two main themes emerged:

1. More and more, the old TEP (i.e., translate, edit, proofread) model is looking tired and outdated. In the age of turnaround time pressures and crowdsourcing translations, new approaches are needed.


2. The type and format of the content being translated has a huge impact on the feasibility of this approach.

But how are 99% of translation companies going to afford the $75,000 or so needed to develop their own system or implement a TRADOS Synergy Server? They're not, that's how.

The good news is that an organization doesn't have to spend that kind of money. Simple process changes can achieve 80% of the same results, with minimal costs. At ForeignExchange, we utilize our "incremental leveraging" and "repetitions file" processes to achieve nearly all of the same benefits of a central TM.

And, going back to the article at Localization Best Practices, we have successfully managed dozens of translators working in parallel, all using one TM, with excellent quality and no central TM.


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Next Monday, Localization World Berlin will kick off. Of particular interest are the medical-translation-themed sessions P2, P4, and P6 on Monday and the quality panel discussion on Wednesday.

The program for this event looks particularly strong. The three-day event does a good job combining introductory and advanced topics. Many of the presentations promise to deliver useful and actionable information. For clients and translation service providers alike, this will be a great event!

And if you are going to be in Berlin, stop by and say hello!

Earlier this year, PharmExec.com ran an article called Insuring Global Clinical Trials.

Written by a manager at insurance giant Chubb, the article is a bit self-serving (for instance, sponsors are urged to select insurance providers that can provide a global solution - like Chubb) but it also points out some useful information.

Requirements vary widely around the world. (Maybe a global insurance provider is a good idea!) In Europe, particularly, sponsors had to comply with insurance requirements written into the Clinical Trials Directive but implemented differently across the EU.

At a time when almost half of clinical studies are conducted outside the U.S., where to conduct a trial all of a sudden has become even more complicated: Sponsors now need to consider insurance requirements as one of the many factor in selecting sites.


ForeignExchange Translations provides specialized medical translations for clinical research - from patient recruitment to ICFs to diaries, ForeignExchange supports sponsors in 40+ languages. Contact us for more information.