Choosing A Medical Translation Service

When choosing a Medical Translation service you want to be sure that from the minute you hand over the material for translation that you are going to receive focused, quality and accurate translated documents. It is recommended that you choose a company, who practices and complies with DIN EN 15038, the European standard for translation service providers. 

Your medical translation requirements should be over seen by a Project Manager, who will oversee the work and be able to provide you with regular updates. Selecting specialised resources may be needed to complete the document translation. Examples of good medical translation practices include: preparing source text for translation; recruiting checking and guiding translators; managing language for technical accuracy and consistency; and checking and revising all translations. Furthermore, editors should moderate and verify samples of the translators work to check it complies with the high standards required of medical translation.

Documents which may need medical translation include: clinical research reports; clinical trial reports; data sheets; doctoral theses; dossiers; drug trials; expert reports; regulatory documents; hospital discharge summaries; information for use; manuscripts; manuals for professionals; medical charts and patient records; and registration.

Medical translation can take many forms. One such form is PRO an acronym for Patient Reported Outcome. For example a patient may have been asked to describe their lifestyle for an assessment, symptoms or singular symptoms. Basically Patient reported outcomes are anything that the patient describes in measure of their own health.  This information is essential in the writing of medical dossiers, worldwide health information and in everyday life, it informs the pharmaceutical companies in the use of medicines and patient experiences of such drugs.

A good medical translation company will have a good range of experts including: experienced project managers, investigators and researchers, skilled linguistic specialists who are both translators and proof-readers and highly experienced clinicians.

But medical translation services are not only for documentation purposes. Experienced translators can provide face-to-face interpreting in hospital and other medical institutions.  Medically trained linguists provide the important communication between patients with limited English and health care professionals, which is essential in the supply of the correct treatment and processes. At the heart of the translation service provided for patients should be quality, clear and confidential translation, during the medical interpretation of information and native speakers will need to be accustomed to working in stressful and emotive circumstances who will be sympathetic to the needs of the patient.

Regulation of medical translation service is over seen by regulatory bodies, such is the life and death nature of medical texts. Hence why there is a need for services to have such a high level of translation quality. It is highly regulated and companies must comply with or be certified for either the: ISO 9001 standard; EN 15038 or ISO 13485. If the company you are going to use does not have certification that shows compliance with these regulations then quite simply do not use them. If they do show evidence of compliance, then they are a legitimate company to use.

Leave a Comment

Scroll to Top