How To Choose A Medical Translation Vendor

If you are not sure as to why you should opt for Medical Certified Translation services, you should understand one thing here. Translation, if done properly, should allow you to achieve your revenue goals and not necessarily be a cost center.

Let’s discuss some of the points that you should be considering when choosing a translation vendor. And most importantly, your vendor should be talking about the following points. And if he is not, then one should opt for another option. 

• Longevity 

Always think of it in terms of longevity. There are a lot of startup firms out there that are providing services like Veterinary Translation Services. But there is no guarantee that there won’t be any eventual inaccuracies or quality issues in their translations. 

Hence, looking for a vendor that has wide experience. And has been doing it for a long period would minimize such potential risks. 

Risks are very high when medical translations are being done. Therefore, try to look at longevity. Asking how long the firm has been in business or at a bare minimum, how long has the key staff members been performing medical translations, can help along the way. 

• Quality Initiatives And Registrations

Also, look at quality initiatives like ISO 9001 and ISO 17 100. 

Many companies in the translation world just go ahead and do this to get the piece of paper or only to be able to have the conversation. 

If you talk to your vendor a little bit about their QMS; what does their quality management system look like? What does their quality assurance manual look like? It would be beneficial. 

Dig in and learn a little bit about how they run their quality program. And you’ll learn if it’s lip service, or they are getting some benefit out of the quality initiative, and how that works in your favor. 

• Process

Looking at the process is imperative too.

Usually, Medical Certified Translation services have a translator plus an editor. And then there’s a quality check after that. There might be desktop publishing and another quality check. But one has to dig down deep and understand what steps your vendor is following to complete your translation.

Also, look at industry experience. If you’re looking at a vendor that predominantly works in manufacturing, and it’s just all heavy equipment that has nothing to do with medical devices You might want to think twice about that. 

• Translation Memory Management

Also, look at translation memory management. At this point of the game, most firms are using translation memory. But double-check that. Ensure that matches or repetitions are used for the benefit of you as the client

So sort of going down a little bit deeper.

• Transparency And Pricing

When you’re looking at vendors, talk a little bit about transparency and pricing. Companies often have a 20 language project and they’re getting a one-line item estimate that doesn’t have an explanation of the steps that are followed. 

It doesn’t have a breakdown by language. You should dig down and look at the sub-data. In other words, how many repetitions are you getting? How many 100% matches are you getting?

 This might make a little more sense when we talk about translation memory, but understand where the discounts are coming from and ask since most of you also have software that goes along with your device, you should be asking, What are my updates going to look like?

So in other words, when you update this piece of software and all the documentation that goes along with it, what is my pricing going to look like? How will that work? 

Try to understand if you’re getting honeymoon pricing. That’s also a very common thing that translation vendors will do is they’ll put in samples with high-quality translators and then merely fill the rest with low-quality translations and then increase their prices. You want to make sure that again if you have full transparency, there’s nowhere to hide.

• Workflow

The workflow is also important. Because of the lack of transparency that sometimes happens in quoting in the translation industry, you want to understand that editing goes hand in hand with what you’re buying.  

There are some agencies out there that are doing machine translation as a first pass, and then doing human editing as a second pass. Some people do it with success, and that’s fine. 

But the issue with that is that the client should know. The client should understand that this is machine translation as a first pass with human editing. So you are fully armed with comparing that to other vendors. And it’s incredibly important that you understand what the workflow is, and what steps are included in the process. What exactly are you paying for as a buyer? 

That’s also going to help you compare apples to apples, and most good translation vendors can modify their approach. So there is inherently a risk in doing machine translation with humans.

Conclusion

There are a few agencies in the market that use doing machine translation as a first step, before performing human editing as a second run. Certain people are doing it successfully and it’s okay.

The problem is that the customer should be aware. The user should be aware the fact that it can be a machine translation as a first test with human editing. This means that you’re fully armed with comparing that with other companies. It’s vital to know the process, and what steps are involved in the procedure. What do you really pay to buy?

This will also allow you to compare apples with apples. Moreover, good translation vendors can modify their methods. There is a risk when doing machine translation with humans.

Choosing a medical translation vendor can be a very hectic task. However, if one follows a proper checklist and ensures that all of the mentioned points can be found in that particular vendor, then it would be the right choice. 

In this article, we tried to do that. And some important points that can help companies choose the best agency for them.