What is Medical Translation?
Medical translation is the translation of medical documents such as Patient information booklets, Clinical trial forms, and research reports, pharmaceutical and healthcare-related materials which require regulatory authorities' need for translation into the official language of the country where it is being distributed. Protocols, patient trial outcomes, patient education booklets, translation of research documents are some of the documents that require accurate translation and translation by bi-lingual experts.
Medical, Healthcare and Pharmaceutical industries often require document translations that strictly comply with regulatory authorities’ needs and accuracy.
Demand For Medical Translation And Interpretation
Government bodies under the Ministry of health and family welfare, Regulatory authorities and autonomous medical councils, supervise and regulate the type of documents that need translation into all Indian languages. These include pharmaceutical, healthcare products of diverse nature that are prescribed by doctors and chemists that require information on usage and warnings in all Indian languages.
Doctors often prescribe medicine based on the diagnosis. Certain ailments, operations, investigation, and approval require patient education in their native language. Hospitals and the Doctors and Public relations officers need to talk to the relatives of the patient and patients themselves for understanding the diagnosis, and then, the action is taken - both surgical and non-surgical. In case the patient is not able to understand the terms or the language, interpreters are sought to interpret the same in the native language.
Demand for medical translators and interpretation is mainly because of government regulation.
Due to an increase in literacy level and lifestyle, and coverage in social media, there is greater awareness of health and hygiene. The Swatch Bharat campaign by the Government of India has been a significant contributing factor for demanding better healthcare facilities and knowledge. Rural healthcare has resulted in an increased need for medical and healthcare translation.
Demand for medical translation services has increased due to consumer demand for knowledge.
India is a big market due to the large population and growing use of branded products of Ayurveda, Allopathy, and Homeopathy have led to an increase in the manufacture and distribution of OTP Products. There are significant marketing efforts and advertising in vernacular languages too.
Demand for medical translation services has increased due to consumer demand for branded products.
-
-
Government Regulation
-
Awareness of Healthcare
-
Competition
-
Who is qualified to do Medical translation and interpretation?
Only certified translators experienced in medical translation are qualified for this kind of translation. Very often, there are no translatable words. Under such circumstances, phonetic words are used with an explanation in the bracket in the desired language.
Doctors’ guidance and medical expert advice, as well as proofreading of the translation, is vital in medical translation document and glossary preparation.
In the medical field, using machine translation is particularly dangerous, and can lead to severe misunderstandings and adverse consequences.
How to select a Translator?
-
Create a data bank of translators based on the following criteria
✔ Language pairs
✔ Mother tongue
✔ Specialization
✔ Domain knowledge
✔ Experience
-
Shortlist the data based on the following information
✔ Should have translated at least 100,000 words
✔ Contains two references for previous projects
✔ Has translated into their mother tongue
✔ Understands the medical terminology
✔ Provided residence proof
✔ Provided Copy of certificates and awards
-
Evaluate the shortlisted candidate based on the following information
✔ Candidate submits a sample translation
✔ 2nd translator back translates the translated text
✔ Internal Validator compares the translation to mark differences
✔ Reports discrepancies
✔ Project Manager discusses issues with translator and back-translator for generating a final score
-
Empanelment
✔ Based on the Evaluation report, writers are graded by the number of a major and minor error made by them
✔ Senior Managers approve such writers who perform better.
Medical translators are of two types:
- General Medical translators
- Specialist Medical translators
A general medical translator needs to translate documents for the use of a layperson, such as those working in the administration of a hospital, or those giving patients instructions. Such a translator only needs to have basic medical knowledge.
A specialist medical translator, on the other hand, translates technical and scientific documents that contain specific details, such as those found in medical journal articles. He or she must possess an in-depth understanding of the specialization, including all the medical terms that are used.
Can we resort to Machine translation?
Very often, doctors rely on the aid of machine translation to communicate with limited English proficient (LEP) patients. Despite advancements in technology, machine translation software is still widely known for its inaccuracies and using this platform in the medical field is a recipe for disaster.
Google translate does not understand some of the typical English Statements.
One such example quoted by Niki’s Int’l ltd says the original phrase in English "Your husband had a cardiac arrest" got utterly wrong in machine translation to various languages. While back translating the translated version, it says "Your husband’s heart was imprisoned".
Poor quality of translation often gets unnoticed as we do not know the language. Very often it gets noticed after publishing, and by then it can be disastrous. In the medical field, a misunderstanding of the source content can give the wrong meaning.
For example, while translating from English to Spanish; the promotional material for a fertility clinic, a slight error in language construction gave a completely embarrassing result. The original version, ‘Our head surgeon is involved in enabling the birth of over 20 babies a month’ got wrongly translated to say ‘Our head surgeon personally gives birth to over 20 babies a month’.
How To Ensure Quality When You Do Not Know The Language?
Quality assurance is the biggest challenge a medical translator faces. How does one ensure the accuracy of the translated document? The simplest option is to get a skilled assistant to review and edit it. It is also essential to have an end-user review the final translation for its readability.
We lay great importance on the quality of the translation. Our translators for the medical, pharmaceutical and healthcare industry are experienced and qualified professionals with a proven track record of handling translation of all sorts of medical and research-related documents with high accuracy.
Steps were taken to ensure the quality of translation:/p>
✔ Employ translators who have rich experience in handling medical transcripts and who are professionals of healthcare industry.
✔ Prepare glossary of the terms and leverage CAT tools for filtering unmatched words and terminology.
✔ Use translation memory bank for consistency of terms used.
✔ Proof check with another expert and if needed, get back translation done to verify errors.
Shakti Enterprise is a one-stop destination for end-to-end medical translation solutions. We have undertaken and accomplished varied types of medical translation projects with utmost accuracy since inception for all our clients.
We are ISO and DIN Certified and also a member of ATA. We strictly comply with regulatory authorities' needs for quality of translation.
We are one of the pioneers in India for Medical translations from European to English and English to all Indian Languages.
-
We have the resources and process in place
-
Our turn-around times are quick
-
Our quality adherence are international standards
-
Our costs are low compared to the International market
-
We give value for money
We allow our clients to access the current database of correct medical terminology, and this assures that the projected meaning of medical text or message is communicated to the target audience accurately.
We are the first medical translation specialist who has created a database of correct medical terminology, and this database has been enriched regularly over the last 20 years in coordination with the clients who are leaders of the pharmaceutical industry.
We only employ and entrust medical translations to certified medical translators. So, our clients can rest assured to receive highly efficient and accurate medical translation services from us at a pocket-friendly rate. Before the medical translation is handed over to our clients, it is reviewed and proofread appropriately by the expert medical translators to deliver high quality translated content with 100% accuracy..
