Medical Translation Insight

It's been a few months since Signal vs. Noise said "there's a world of difference between truly standing for something and having a mission statement that says you stand for something". When I first read it, I thought "Hmm, interesting", and put it away. But I kept thinking about this in the months since, realizing that there is a lot to that statement.

While I am not sure that I agree with the example that they give (while their missions statement may leave room for improvement, I happen to think that Enterprise does a better job renting cars than most other companies), I definitely do agree with their bottom-line statement:

Standing for something isn't just about writing it down. It's about believing it and living it.

I know from personal experience that this is important - and difficult to do.

A few years ago, ForeignExchange's team rallied around our company vision statement. If you are on the ForeignExchange team, you know that this is what we are working towards:

We have found that our vision statement is an excellent management tool. When decisions loom (Where do we invest? Who do we hire? What kind of business do we pursue?), it acts as a kind of litmus test - what is the right course of action in pursuit of our vision? As I said before, we honestly believe that we help reduce human suffering around the world.

In your personal and professional lives, do work that matters!


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

The other day, The Wall Street Journal's Health Blog asked the question "Is the FDA Too Easy On Medical Devices?" If so, it should further exacerbate device manufacturers' practice of introducing new devices in Europe before releasing them in the U.S.

For medical devices, there is no European approval authority like FDA. Instead, EU countries require medical devices to "CE Mark" their products. The CE Mark certifies that the product meets EU standards for health, safety, quality, and the environment. (Review our primer on European directives for more information.)

The CE Mark is more than just a rubber stamp, but earning it can be less of a hurdle compared to earning FDA approval. The specifics depend on the type of product though. A recent article in DOTmed said that

If the EU's process is faster, it's only so for Class 3 or Class 2 products (of which Europe has two, Class 2a and Class 2b; the latter's riskier), as the FDA makes minimal demands on Class 1

The practice of first introducing some new devices in Europe has important implications for translations.

First, confidentiality is of particular importance. Client regularly approach us to translate packaging and instructions for new products. A typical translation effort can involve 60 contract linguists and formatters, and it is not uncommon for a client to remind us (or inquire) about the need for secrecy by every participant in the service-delivery chain.

Second, because these are no devices, reference materials are often sparse. In fact, they may be totally missing. This requires additional analysis up-front and a robust Q&A process during the translation phase.

Lastly, the lack of reference materials tends to also impact the client's in-country reviewers. Often, they hear about a new device for the first time when they receive it from us for review. In these situations, extra planning and communication are required to make sure that in-country reviews don't turn into a waste of time.


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

Quite honestly, aren't you getting bored of all of the "buzz" around crowdsourced translations? I know I was getting tired of it. It's too much, too repetitive, and too irrelevant to our business.

That is - I was bored until earlier this week, when I stumbled upon Evernote's crowdsourcing efforts.

Evernote is a two-year-old software startup whose products allow you to "remember everything" by taking notes, snipping web text, and amassing voice memos from your PC, Mac, phone, you name it. Even though I haven't used the tool, two million folks out there are using it, and the company's product is getting good reviews. Too small for the big localization companies, clients like Evernote have provided steady work and good margins to many a smaller software localization provider.

Apparently, those days are gone.

About a year after its founding, the company announced "We Want to Speak Your Language" and, noting that localizing software is "a tremendous task", asked users and the world at large for translation help.

The most amazing thing about this? Responses to the company's request for help have been extremely positive. So positive, in fact, that the company seems to have greatly expanded its goal and now has localization efforts underway in 16 languages.

Now Evernote is, I am sure, a fine company with a good product. But it's a for-profit company and unlike Facebook's crowdsourced translation efforts it doesn't support "a community". I am truly astonished that they are able to pull this off.

This doesn't bode well for:

1. Small, non-specialized software localization providers who have relied on smaller software developers for revenue; if Evernote can do it, I would expect any "B2C" software company can have a go at crowdsourcing translations;
2. Freelance translators who have built-up a practice around this type of work and end-clients; they are being displaced by translators (professional or not) who do it for the fun of it - "digital sharecroppers".

But it would be short-sided to blame companies like Evernote for trying to save money and reach global users more quickly. The AQtext blog put it best by quoting Nicholas Carr's concept of digital sharecroppers:

...the sharecroppers operate happily in an attention economy while their overseers operate happily in a cash economy. In this view, the attention economy does not operate separately from the cash economy; it's simply a means of creating cheap inputs for the cash economy.

There is a whole lot of hurt coming to parts of the translation business...


Unlike B2C software developers, medical device companies have exacting quality expectations for their software localization work. To help device manufacturers reach global markets, ForeignExchange offers a complete suite of medical translation, localization, and testing services. Contact us for more details.
 
 

Speaking of Canada, The eCTD Summit had a good update on the progress Health Canada is making regarding eCTD. The information stems from DIA's 8th Annual Electronic Submissions Conference [PDF link], held last November in San Diego.

For those of us that were not able to attend, The eCTD Summit summarizes the materials presented by Health Canada's Vianney Caron and

• provides a background overview of Health Canada's e-review program
• gives recent statistics
• discusses quality findings
• represents experiences so far, and
• outlines next steps.

If you are involved in Canadian regulatory submissions and couldn't make it to San Diego, check out this good article!


ForeignExchange Translations provides specialized medical translations for electronic as well as paper-based regulatory submissions. Contact us to find out more.
 
 

When Malta joined the European Union in 2004, many medical translation providers asked “What is Maltese?”.

The huge increase in demand for professional Maltese translations (think centralized procedure, product labeling, not to speak of official EU business) has resulted in a chronic shortage of Maltese translators. As recently as 2009, the EU Commission singled out Maltese translators as "particularly difficult" to recruit.

With that in mind, let's take a look at Maltese:

First, a bit of history
Maltese is the national language of Malta, an island in the Mediterranean just south of Sicily. The Maltese archipelago is comprised of Malta, Gozo, Comino, and two uninhabited islands, Cominotto (Kemmunet) and Filfla. While Maltese is the eponymous language of Malta, both Maltese and English are considered official languages throughout these islands.

For almost 900 years, the island of Malta fell victim to numerous invasions and occupations. Its location in the center of the Mediterranean made it a strategic naval hub; those who occupied Malta could monitor the Mediterranean corridor and have a safe haven for their ships. This violent and tumultuous history is what formed the Maltese language as we know it today.

• 700 BC: The Ancient Greeks settle on Malta.
• 200 BC: During the First Punic War, the Maltese rebel against Carthage and turn control over to the Roman Republic.
• 395 AD: The Roman Empire splits, and Malta falls to the Greek speaking Byzantine Empire.
• 909: Malta is invaded by Arabs as part of the Byzantine-Arab Wars.
• 1091: The Maltese Islands are invaded by French speaking Normans.
• 1194: Control is passed to the House of Hohenstaufen and Malta becomes part of the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation.
• 1275: Malta is taken over by the Aragonese and falls under Spanish reign.
• 16th to 18th centuries: Malta is occupied by Italian, French, and Latin speakers. Napoleon conquers the islands in 1798.
• 1814: Malta becomes a British colony.
• 1934: Maltese and English replace Italian as the official languages of Malta.
• 1964: Malta gains independence from the United Kingdom.
• 2004: Malta joins the European Union.

Modern Maltese is a direct result of these centuries of occupation as each new invader brought their distinctive language(s) with them. It truly is a one of a kind idiom – mixing Semitic, Germanic, and Romance languages to form an entirely unique linguistic entity.

The Maltese language
Maltese is a modern Semitic language, and Maltese is closely related to the Western Arabic dialects. While it maintains a strong Arabic base, many of the words and pronunciations have been influenced by Italian, Sicilian, French, and English. It is estimated that the origin of Maltese is 40% Semitic, 40% Romance, and 20% English.

Maltese was not recognized as an official standardized language until the early 20th century. While many examples of written Maltese existed prior to the 20th century (the earliest known Maltese literary text comes from the 15th century), they varied greatly and no explicit grammatical or orthographical rules had previously been enforced.

The eventual standardization of the language was primarily due to an effort by the country's scholars, known as the Academy of the Maltese Language (Akkademja tal-Malti), to create a unified and codified Maltese language. They accomplished this by transcribing the vernacular into a comprehensive written form.

The first edition of this book, the Knowledge on Writing in Maltese (Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija), was published in 1924. The rules were further elaborated on in subsequent books published in 1984, 1992, and 1996.

Today, the language is regulated by the National Council for the Maltese Language (KNM), however the rules established in the Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija are still considered valid and official. In fact, Maltese is currently the only Semitic language to be recognized as an official language by the European Union.

Maltese is also the only Semitic language to use the Latin alphabet. Even the oldest Maltese documents were written using Roman characters. The modern Maltese orthography was developed in 1924 in the Tagħrif fuq il-Kitba Maltija. The alphabet consists of 30 characters including 6 "special" characters unique to Maltese:

• Ċ
• Ġ
• GĦ
• Ħ
• IE
• Ż

While Maltese grammar is fundamentally based on Siculo-Arabic, all of the loan words follow the noun pluralization rules of the Romance or English words they are derived from.

Today it is estimated that 100% of the population of Malta speaks the Maltese language, while 88% speak English, 66% speak Italian, and 17% speak French. This makes Malta one of the most multi-lingual countries in the European Union. This is hardly surprising given the nation's diverse and unpredictable history.

How to treat this "rare" language?
It is obvious that Maltese is an entirely unique language and it should be treated as such. All translation projects with Maltese as a target language should be carried out by native speakers.

While this is paramount when it comes to marketing and/or more culturally focused texts, this can also be very difficult, as the EU experience mentioned at the top of this article highlights. With roughly 400,000 native speakers, there can only be so many professional translators.

Drug and device companies are well advised to carefully screen the Maltese capabilities of their translation partners. Particularly under programs like the centralised procedure, companies call ill-afford a delay due to resource bottlenecks.

How do you do that? Ask for references, conduct test translations, and don't put all of your eggs in one basket!


ForeignExchange translates medical device and pharmaceutical materials into Maltese - as well as dozens of other languages. Ask us for a detailed proposal on your next translation project.
 
 

In contrast to problematic interpreting assignments, the dirty laundry of professional translation doesn't normally get aired in public. So, Hockey Canada's decision to temporarily close down part of its French-language site because of translation problems is noteworthy.

And the press has been having a field day. The Toronto Sun reported "numerous French-language errors on the site". lfpress.com provided a couple of sample errors in its coverage:

Many of the errors are found in the new official Hockey Canada store website, which can be accessed from the site's welcome page. There are many errors in the names of the merchandise, such as using a more colloquial term for "child" (gosse, which can mean kid, youngster, etc.) when advertising children's jerseys in French. A regular T-shirt (the English term T-shirt is acceptable in French), becomes a "tee-shirt de Manche de Court des enfants."

The coverage in The Global and Mail prompted interesting comments. Some were praising the fact that this made the news, while others marveled at that fact. Some commentators were glad that this issue made the public aware of a "constantly recurring problem", while others were reminded that Quebec francophones are a "bunch of whiny ingrates".

This being Canada, anything having to do with hockey is a big deal. Now add in another hot potato like language, and you've got yourself some real entertainment...


ForeignExchange Translations provides specialized translation services to drug and medical device companies - in Canadian French and dozens of other languages!
 
 

We rely on the folks at the Übersetzungsfehler blog for a good bit of our translation-related entertainment (see examples 1, 2, 3, and 4).

While their blog normally deals with written translations, they (lucky) made an exceptions for this gem:



If you don't speak German, you should go find somebody who does - it's worth the effort.

My favorite part starts around the 1:25 minute mark. La Toya Jackson, accepting an award to posthumously honor her late brother Michael, said "You know that ... he was giving actually to 39 charities."

The intrepid interpreter rendered this as "Sie wissen ... er gab uns 39 ..." - and that was it!

Not only did he not know how to listen and speak at the same time (admittedly a difficult but essential part of simultaneous interpreting), he mistakenly turned "he was giving to" into "he gave us", and he couldn't think of the German word for "charities". And so it went for the rest of La Toya's speech.

The interpreter was probably selected on the basis of "speaking English" and coming at a low (or zero) cost. But given his obvious lack of any interpreting skill, that minimal cost quickly turned into a huge liability. I can only imagine the whincing or befuddlement of the TV audience and the anger of the Jacksons' managers after learning of this debacle!


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Thar's gold in them thar hills!

We hear a lot about China and its attractions for manufacturing and clinical research.

But China is not just for manufacturing anymore. Wikipedia's extensive overview of the Chinese domestic market contains the following:

China accounts for 20% of the world's population but only 1.5% of the global drug market.

The domestic pharmaceutical market is highly fragmented and inefficient.

China is reportedly expected to become the fifth largest pharmaceuticals market in the world by 2010.

To wit, here are three recent stories that demonstrate global pharmaceutical companies are, indeed, seeing gold in the pharmacies and hospitals of Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu.

Most recently, Pfizer announced that it was looking to expand its Chinese sales force even though its busily trimming sales reps in its home market.

The same day, a Pfizer exec noted the "very good profitability" of the Chinese market and now the company was going to use partnerships to grow its presence.

But Pfizer just serves as a recent example for what every drug company is doing. Novartis, for instance, is looking to invest billions in China, all with the hope of transforming China into Novartis' 3rd largest market.

Giddy times, indeed.


ForeignExchange Translations provides specialized medical translation services to pharmaceutical and biotech companies - in Chinese and dozens of other languages. Contact us to find out why our clients rave about us!
 
 

Good news! Just in case you needed another reason for buying a Wii, here you go:

A ScienceDirect paper titled "Validity and reliability of the Nintendo Wii Balance Board for assessment of standing balance" has verified that the board's data is clinically comparable to that of a laboratory-grade force platform.

Now why would anybody even want to use a Wii board instead of a force platform? In a word: Price.

Amazingly enough, the $100 Wii Balance Board's performance in measuring balance is clinically comparable to a lab-grade force platform that costs $17,885.

As reported in MedicalDeviceSummit, one of the paper's authors remarked that the "low price of the Wii kit is now seeing it used to assess rehabilitation after stroke, traumatic brain injuries and to examine standing balance in children who were born pre-term".

The line between games and medical devices continues to blur... For more examples of this trend, check out what you can do with an Xbox 360 or Nintendo DS.

[Thanks to @MedDeviceSummit for the tip!]


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

If you are not a serious font geek, please move along - there is nothing to see here for you. But if you - like us - enjoy scanning your environs for serif and sans serif fonts, we present to you... Helvetica, a feature-length film about typography, graphic design, and global visual culture.

In addition to being a unique concept, it is also a very timely movie. Just as we have gotten used to the idea of separating content from format (and realized we won't be in charge of selecting fonts any more), this documentary teases us with an in-depth look at the proliferation of this 50-year-old typeface "as part of a larger conversation about the way type affects our lives."



But again, beware - this is not for everybody. Some reviewers love it and call it "one of the wittiest, most diligently researched, slyly intelligent and quietly captivating documentaries of the year", while others hate it and call it "boring".

[Thanks to The Content Wrangler for the tip!]


If you haven't fully satisfied your inner font geek yet, check out the must-have periodic table of typefaces.


ForeignExchange Translations provides medical device and pharmaceutical companies with desktop publishing in 40+ languages, dozens of DTP applications, and serif as well as sans-serif fonts.
 
 

Email use has become so ubiquitous that it's easy to assume that its use and customs are universal. But not so. Two items recently drove home the point of how local email usage is.

First, I came across the innocent question "What do you call the little symbol in your email address?" on the Global Lingo Blog. Hmmm, good question!

In many non-English languages, @ was much less common before email and is often seen in as being integrally linked to "The Internet", computerization, or maybe modernization in general. Who would suspect that @ is more than 500 years old?

It's interesting to note the following sample usages:

• The French go with escargot which translates as snail.
• The Dutch, use apestaartje (monkey's tail).
• Germans used to call it something similar - klammeraffe (spider monkey) but the English "at" is gaining ground.
• Danes refer to it as grisehale (pig's tail) or snabel (with an elephant's trunk).
• In Georgian it is "at" (using the English pronunciation).
• Hungarians see it as the worm or maggot, kukac.
• The Hebrew term is strudel, after the pastry.
• In Korean it is called golbaeng-i, a small freshwater snail with no tentacles.

For a list of country-specific usages, check out Wikipedia.

Speaking of Korean, that brings us to the second item. In a recent discussion on LinkedIn [free registration required], Joshua Choi recounted some examples of local email customs:

In Korea, we use "k k k" which is not "kill kill kill" or "Ku Klux Klan" but for a sound of laughing. We also use "^^" for smiling eyebrows, and ^^; for smiling and sweating (when you are smiling but little embarrased). I heard "555" means "ha ha ha" in Thailand, and 555+ means "loud laughing". I also heard @+ means "see you" in France.

Together with the responses that the query generated, one could develop a "mini international guide to email acronyms" - ROTFL!


Follow us on Twitter @fxtrans.

The folks at Emergo Group know their way around global medical device regulations. They proved this yet again by publishing an excellent overview of medical device regulatory processes in:

• Australia
• Brazil
• Canada
• China
• EU
• Japan
• Korea
• Mexico
• Russia
• U.S.

Head on over to Emergo Group's web site [PDF link] and download this handy reference piece.

And if you want to get a more in-depth dose of Emergo Group's expertise, check out their series of regulatory audio conferences.

[Tip of the hat to Jan van der Kuil]


ForeignExchange translates regulatory filings for submission around the world. Ask us why our clients rave about us!
 
 

A few months ago, we pointed out that English really isn't the official language of India - even if many Westerners believe it to be. Because India is central to drug and device companies' development efforts, we thought we would take a more in-depth look at the linguistic landscape in India.

In India, language is one of the main components of a person's ethnic identity. Furthermore languages, and thus individual identities, are both numerous and expansive throughout the Indian nation. The Indian constitution currently recognizes 22 official languages. Almost each of these recognized languages includes different dialects or variations of that language.

Outside of these official languages there are several other non-official, but recognized languages, as well as numerous idioms which are not currently recognized by the central government. Most of the present state boundaries in India were created based on the density of the "primary" Indian languages as determined by the Indian constitution.

History
After India's independence in 1947, the central government decided that the official language of India would be Hindi. The Indian constitution declared that English could also be used for official purposes. Speakers of other languages saw in this decision an attempt to erase their linguistic cultures. While Hindi has at least 13 different dialects and is the most commonly spoken language in India, the reason Hindi was ultimately chosen to be the official language of India was because it has a connection with Indian political history before its independence.

Most Indians are religiously tied to the Hindu faith and therefore speak Hindi as their primary language. Urdu, another common Indian language, is perceived as the language of Muslims.

Before India's independence, each of these two religious groups advocated for the prevalence of their language as the official language of India. In order to secure Hindi's position as the sole official language, certain political leaders convinced northern Indians to claim their language as a dialect of Hindi. Thus different, previously unrelated, dialects were grouped together into a "Hindi" speaking category. This helped Hindi appear to be the most commonly spoken language in India.

Once Hindi was chosen as the official language of the nation, different "Hindi" language speakers began demanding official recognition of their supposedly unique languages. For example, speakers of Maithali and Punjabi demanded recognition of their languages as separate entities of Hindi. Of these two languages, only Punjabi received this recognition. Other "Hindi" languages are considered dialects of Hindi. Their status in the different states of India remains unclear and is open to interpretation.

The official Hindi language is based on the dialect spoken in the Delhi-Agra region that employs a Sanskrit vocabulary. While the Hindi spoken by the majority of Indians is based on this dialect, it is also affected by popular cultural influences such as the cinema based in Mumbai (formerly Bombay) and various English words.

As previously stated, many speakers of other Indian languages viewed the decision to have Hindi as the primary official language of the country as an attempt to erase their linguistic cultures. After numerous struggles - political, violent, and passive - the central government decided to allow the state governments to choose their official languages.

The central government now constitutionally recognizes 22 Indian languages. One of the advantages of constitutional recognition is the right to use any of these languages for government service examinations. In reality, however, linguistic discrimination still exists and this possibility isn't always given to the examinee.

As of right now, the following languages are officially recognized by the Indian constitution: Assamese/Axomiya, Bengali, Bodo, Dogri, Gujarati, Hindi, Kannada, Kashmiri, Konkani, Maithili, Malayalam, Manipuri (also called Meitei/Meithei), Marathi, Nepali, Oriya, Punjabi, Sanskrit, Santali, Sindhi, Tamil, Telugu, Urdu.

Localization: Where do these dialects fit in?
Here at ForeignExchange, we have seen a demand in localization for a handful of these official Indian languages. Please find these languages highlighted below:

Hindi vs. Urdu
Hindi is spoken in the "Hindi Belt," an area in north and central India where Hindi is either the native or primary language. Urdu is mainly spoken in Uttar Pradesh, but is also prevalent in the regions of Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, and Bihar.

Hindi and Urdu differ both in the way they are written and in their use of the Sanskrit vocabulary. Standard Hindi is written in Devanagari and expands its vocabulary using (Indo-Aryan) Sanskrit words. Urdu is written in a unique Urdu alphabet which is a variant of the (Semitic) Perso-Arabic script and draws heavily on Persian and Arabic vocabulary (Urdu is not only the official languages of certain regions of India, but also of Iran).

The colloquial languages spoken by the people of Delhi are indistinguishable by ear, whether called Hindi or Urdu by its speakers. The only important linguistic distinction is at the level of script: if written in the Perso-Arabic script, the language is generally considered to be Urdu, while if written in Devanagari it is generally considered to be Hindi.

Since India's independence the historical Hindi and Urdu used in education and the media have become increasingly divergent in their spoken vocabulary. Where there is no colloquial word for a concept, standard Urdu uses a Perso-Arabic vocabulary, while standard Hindi uses the Sanskrit vocabulary. This results in the official Hindi and Urdu languages being heavily Sanskritized and Persianized, respectively. This has caused the creation of words/phrases that are nearly unintelligible to speakers educated in the formal, more historical standards of these languages.

Marathi
Marathi is spoken by the Marathi people of south western India. It is the official language of the state of Maharashtra. There are 90 million fluent Marathi speakers worldwide. Marathi is the 4th most spoken language in India and the 15th most spoken language in the world.

Tamil
Tamil is a Dravidian language spoken predominantly by Tamil people of the Indian subcontinents. It has official status in India, Sri Lanka and Singapore. Tamil is also spoken in Malaysia, Mauritius, Vietnam, Réunion Island, as well as in several emigrant communities around the world. It is the administrative language of the Indian state of Tamil Nadu, and the first Indian language to be declared as a classical language by the government of India in 2004.

Gujarati
Gujarati is an Indo-Aryan language and is part of the greater Indo-European language family. It is both native to and the chief language of the Indian state of Gujarat. It is also the primary language spoken in the adjacent union territories of Daman and Diu, and Dadra and Nagar Haveli.

There are about 46.1 million speakers of Gujarati worldwide, making it the 26th most spoken language in the world. Along with Romany and Sindhi, it is among the most western of the Indo-Aryan languages.

Kannada
Kannada is one of the major Dravidian languages of India and is spoken predominantly in the state of Karnataka. It is, therefore, both the official and administrative language of this state. Kannada native speakers, called Kannadigas, number roughly 35 million, making it the 27th most spoken language in the world.

There is some distinction between the spoken and written forms of this language. While spoken Kannada tends to vary from region to region, the written form is more or less consistent throughout Karnataka. There exist roughly 20 dialects of Kannada. All of these dialects are influenced by their regional and cultural background.

We are what we speak
The languages we speak play an integral role in all of our identities. This is because language is at the heart of culture and our culture defines how we live.

If anything can be derived from this brief glimpse into the languages of India and their history, let it be the importance of cultural awareness in localization. The more sensitive we are to linguistic cultures, the more accurate, appropriate, and successful our translations will be.


ForeignExchange translates clinical research for medical device and pharmaceutical companies into Indian languages - as well as dozens of other languages. Ask us for a detailed proposal on your next translation project.
 
 

While researching our recent post on Low-cost terminology management, I came across an interesting piece by terminology guru Uwe Muegge, the now departed Corporate Terminologist at Medtronic.

His article shows how device and drug companies can approach terminology management, making it a manageable and effective quality tool. It's interesting to note Medtronic's reliance on ISO standards, such as:

• ISO 704:2000 Terminology work – Principles and methods (good introductory text to terminology management, including guidelines for writing definitions)
• ISO 1087-1:2000 Terminology work – Vocabulary – Part 1: Theory and application (overview text that describes and defines concepts in terminology management)
• ISO 12616:2002 Translation-oriented terminography (information on managing terminology specifically in translation environments)
• ISO 12620:1999 Computer applications in terminology – Data categories (specifies data categories that should be used to ensure easy data exchange between terminology systems)

While most people by now understand the importance of accurate and consistent terminology, many organizations still struggle to fund a terminology management effort.

Uwe provides that justification in the form of a 1998 study from the automotive industry: During the 1998 EAMT Workshop "MULTIDOC - Controlling language in multilingual documentation", Jörg Schütz noted that a terminology change at the "maintenance stage" (i.e., after publication) is 200 times more expensive than a change at the "specification stage". This is neatly expressed in the following diagram:


Uwe puts it succinctly in his article:

"It cannot be repeated too often: Effective terminology management starts long before the first source document in a global campaign is ever written. Terminology stakeholders should decide on new terms for features and functions at the specification stage. Starting later always leads to changes."

While not every company needs to (or can) go to the lengths that Medtronic does in managing terminology, every translation group at drug and device companies can and should do some terminology management.

For more information on managing multilingual terminology, take a look at the following resources:

• Wikipedia has an extensive list of standards and other documents concerning methodology and principles for terminology and language resources
• Our Primer: Translation memory vs. glossary takes a look at (and provides explanations for) some of the differences between translation memories and terminology glossaries
• Angelika Zerfass knows a lot about terminology management; her audio conference An Introduction to Translation Memory Technology provides a detailed look at the translation memory tools on the market today

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

During 2009, Twitter.com was the victim of several hacker attacks and other service interruptions. In each instance, the service managed to recover in a few hours.

While a politically-fueled attack on a business web site may be pretty far down the list of anticipated risks, we wonder: What procedures did Twitter have in place to address and recover from such an event? More importantly, what Business Continuity Planning (BCP) is in place for medical translation service providers' systems?

While a translation company's site isn't likely to be the target of a distributed denial-of-service attack, there are many other disasters that could shut down a business, including:

• natural disasters like earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods
• sabotage or arson
• theft of equipment

BCP involves the creation and preparation of actions that help an organization recover from any unforeseen disruptions of operations. An effective BCP limits business interruptions by giving employees the information, tools, and direction to return to normal operations as soon as possible.

At ForeignExchange, two events drove home the importance of BCP. First, our roof-mounted Internet antenna kept getting stolen at our Colorado office. Given how reliant we are on Internet access, these instance threatened to effectively shut down our operation.

Second, a client requested to specifically audit our disaster recovery and BCP processes. Their audit plan was 40 pages long and provided a good look at all kinds of risks - no matter how far-fetched.

Together, these instances caused us to develop a robust BCP that includes plans, measures, and arrangements to ensure the continuous delivery of critical services. We started by identifying necessary resources to support business continuity, including staff, data, equipment, financial allocations, and infrastructure.

Our final BCP includes budget, training procedures, and implementation of backup and recovery strategies for our key business processes. The following are some of the key points that are covered:

• Ensuring operational capacity — Should any major problem occur at one facility, work can be switched to another site.
• Communications systems — Plans for rerouting voice and data systems to an alternate systems.
• Job tracking and account management system — Remote archives allow for speedy recovery.
• Data and file management system — A robust backup, archival, and file replication process ensure that data is always accessible.

Twitter has shown that its business can recover from disruptions in their operations. How about you - What business continuity planning do you have in place?


ForeignExchange provides specialized translation services in 40+ languages to the world's leading medical device and pharmaceutical companies. Contact us for a detailed proposal!
 
 

ForeignExchange's audio conferences are designed to provide expert insight and advise for the kinds of challenges faced by regulatory, clinical, quality, and translation professionals in medical device and pharmaceutical companies.

As 2009 came to a close, attendees were particularly interested in regulatory affairs topics. Here were the top five educational events during the month of December:

1. QA Oversight of Vendor Management


2. ANDA vs. 505(b)(2): When and Why?


3. EU Medical Device eLabeling, Compliance & Software Requirements


4. Regulatory Framework to Support Biomarker Development: EU & the USA


5. Post-Marketing Issues for Medical Device Companies

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

Interested in other popular educational events? Take a look at our top audio conferences for November.


ForeignExchange helps drug companies prepare translated regulatory submissions for Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Ask us about our streamlined process for electronic submissions!
 
 

 
 
 
 

us!
 
 
 
 
Yes, it's true - Medical Translation Insight has turned one year old.

The team here at ForeignExchange wants to take a bit of time to acknowledge and thank you, our readers. It's been an amazing experience to see you take the time to check in with us, write guest articles, and post comments to our stories. Thank you very much!

Since posting our first piece on Spanish-language glossaries from Novartis (which, unfortunately, are no longer available), things have really taken off. Here are some highlights of the past 12 months at Medical Translation Insight:

• Unique visitors: 31,537 (wow!)
• Most read article: 100% text repetitions: To review or not to review (909 readers)
• Most "tweets" for a post: 12 (for this and this post)
• Most comments for a post: 11 (for Is translation boring?)
• Most visitors in a day: 919 (on January 30, 2009)
• Non-English-speaking visitors: 31%

We are humbled by all of this activity that has allowed us to become a top 100 language blog.

For the ForeignExchange team, it's been a gratifying first year. We reconnected with friends, met interesting new people, learned a a lot about social media, and had a good bit of fun. Here is to an exciting second year!


ForeignExchange's real business is not writing but providing specialized translations for training, regulatory, and clinical research groups at pharmaceutical and medical device companies.
 
 

We are now in the final count-down phase to the updated EU Medical Device Directive (MDD 93/42/EEC).

In keeping with run-ups to past European directives, many companies are still scrambling to meet the new requirements. There is no transition date for the amendment 2007/47/EC, and if device manufacturers are not in line with these new requirements by the implementation date, they could lose CE mark certificates from their notified body.

We have collected an extensive set of resources to help medical equipment manufacturers make the final push. The following eight audio conferences answer all of the questions that you still might have about the changes in the MDD:

• Are You Ready for MDD Amendment Directive 2007/47/EC? by Leo Eisner (upcoming live event)


• Clinical Data Requirements under the New MDD & AIMDD by Joy Frestedt
• Industry Update: Revisions to the Medical Devices Directive by Helen Colquhoun
• Software as a Device: What You Need to Know About the New MDD by Eric Henning
• The 2010 MDD Revisions and What They Mean for Translation by Jason Heaton
• Industry Update: Revisions to the Medical Device Directive 93/42/EEC by Thierry Chignon
• The New MDD: 14 Things You Need to Know by Evangeline Loh
• The Revised MDD: Practical Implications for Devices by Helen Colquhoun

So don't delay any longer and get ready for March 2010!


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

Happy New Year!

As we start 2010, it's exciting to think about what lies ahead: All of the possibilities, opportunities, excitement that's sure to come our way over the next 12 months. But first, a look back...

In December, the posts that received the most attention were:

1. Translation prices are going down, down, down - This was by far the most-read article in December.


2. ForeignExchange is hiring - We have received a huge response to our job listing. Thanks a lot to everybody who wrote!


3. Prepping messy files for TM usage - Dave Turner's tools are a huge help to everybody who struggles with messy source files.


4. Glossary of Spanish acronyms and abbreviations - Tremedica provides lots of valuable resources - check them out.


5. Is Google Translate accurate enough for professional use? - On our most-read list for the 2nd month in a row, the article struck a nerve among translation service providers.

Over the past 12 months, we have published some really good as well as some ... well, let's call them "forgettable" articles. Ever the optimist, I would like to focus on the former group. Based on reader counts, here are the five most-read articles for all of 2009:

1. 100% text repetitions: To review or not to review


2. Periodic table of typefaces


3. Man who grew pot must serve as translator


4. What you need to know about translation memories


5. Will crowdsourcing change the translation business?

Later this week, we will post a more detailed look back at 2009, in the form of an update to our look at social media use in the translation business.


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As we have written about in our post Six reasons not to translate your web site, in some industries, English is the lingua franca of international communication.

And it's not just industries that benefit from (are threatened by?) the use of English. In my native Switzerland, for example, English is increasingly taking the place of French/German/Italian among non-native speakers. That is, most German speakers would rather speak English than French in Genève, and French Swiss would rather speak English than German in Zürich.

It is no surprise then to see companies use English in all kinds of advertisements. The problem is, many non-native English speakers in Europe and elsewhere are struggling to make sense of these English ads.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported some astonishing statistics [German article; Google's English translation] a few years ago: 85% of surveyed consumers in Germany couldn't make sense of Siemens Mobile's tag line "Be inspired". A whopping 92% failed to understand (let alone be persuaded by) RWE's slogan "One Group. Multi Utilities". Even relatively well understood tag lines like "Every time a good time" (McDonald's) and "There's no better way to fly" (Lufthansa) could only be understood by around half of the surveyed consumers.

A couple of months ago, Der Spiegel ran a follow-up piece on the subject [German article; Google's English translation]. The situation hasn't improved much in Germany (and probably not elsewhere either).

The magazine reported that of more than 1,000 surveyed consumers, only about 25% can make sense of English slogans and tag lines. A common interpretation of Philips' tag line "sense and simplicity", for instance, is "simple like a scythe".

According to Philips,

"sense and simplicity" encapsulates our commitment to intimately understand the needs and aspirations of consumers and customers in order to deliver innovative solutions that are advanced and easy to experience.

Hmmm, you might want to rethink that one...


For medical device and pharmaceutical companies who want to be understood around the world, ForeignExchange Translations provides specialized advertising translation services with measurable quality. Ask us why our clients rave about us!