What do you need to do to translate your medical diagnostic project successfully? Follow these seven steps from SimulTrans and find out how to achieve success.
The first ingredient to getting an excellent translation is to ensure that your English source text is well-written and free from errors and colloquialisms.
This isn't always the case because the text could have been written by:
To compensate for these scenarios, you can ask your translation services provider to undertake a linguistic review of the source text. This review is usually done by a qualified subject matter expert, which should be the first step in the translation process.
During the linguistic review, the subject matter expert will:
You can also create a glossary of key terms at this early part of the process if you do not have one. Next, the terms can be translated by your chosen localization partner and then sent to you if you wish to sign off. This step allows you to get ahead of any medical diagnostics-specific terminology queries that could come up during translation.
If your medical diagnostics product has a software component that will not be translated, your translation partner should know this at the very start.
For instance, buttons with labels or the software itself might be left untranslated. Have a clear plan and communicate whether they should :
Considerations like these are key to ensuring that everything from your software, to your medical device, to your user manual, to your online help make sense together without conflicting translations.
If your user manuals or instructions for use have screen captures from the software, whether your software will be localized or not could have an impact on the final deliverable.
If your internal team does have the capacity to review the translated text and would like to see specific changes applied to the translations, it is important to communicate this with your translation partner at the beginning, so they can allocate time for the client review.
There are several ways a translation workflow can be tailored to your teams' requirements, depending on when they would like to review the text during the translation process.
Here are a few examples:
Each situation can be different, so talk to your localization partner about a review process that works best for you and your team.
Your localization service provider should be able to offer you third-party, independent reviews of the translations that their initial team provided. This third-party review is carried out by a different team. The aim is to comply with certain regulations so that your medical device passes and can be sold abroad. A third-party review ensures that the translation faithfully represents the source and any discrepancies are resolved before it goes to the patient.
This may not be a step you need every time, but it is certainly one worth considering if you can't perform local reviews internally. Using your localization partners' wide network of local subject matter experts can reduce the review effort of your internal staff who may have other full-time responsibilities.
If your localization partner is also performing Desktop Publishing which is the formatting or laying out of the translations in FrameMaker, InDesign, etc. and ultimately delivering your print-ready manual, you want to ensure that you have provided them with the correct information, so there are no delays at the printing stage. Here are the most important ones:
You can also put your printer in touch with your localization partner to ensure the final deliverable is exactly what you need.
Ultimately, selecting the right localization partner with the relevant ISO certifications will ensure a successful translation project.
Next time you have a medical diagnostics product that needs to reach international patients and medical practitioners, contact SimulTrans.