Multilingual medical translations
01/THE CLIENT
Vall d’Hebron is an internationally renowned healthcare campus that offers highly complex medical care. It is highly specialised in rare diseases at the regional, national and international levels, and it has been incorporated as a full member of 20 of the 24 European Reference Networks. The Vall d’Hebron Research Institute (VHIR) promotes and develops biosanitary research, innovation and teaching at the Vall d’Hebron University Hospital and is where the scientific coordination of the ERN-EuroBloodNet is carried out.
The scientific direction of the ERN-EuroBloodNet, dedicated to Rare Hematological Diseases (RHD), is led by Dr. María del Mar Mañú Pereira, head of the Rare Anemic Disorders research laboratory within the Cancer and Childhood Hematological Diseases research group.
The ERN-EuroBloodNet is a collaborative network that aims to improve health services for EHR and conditions that require highly specialised treatment in Europe. To ensure compliance with these objectives, the ERN-EuroBloodNet medical-scientific coordination team is in charge of three main centres: Assistance Publique – Hôpitaux de Paris, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB/Hôp. Erasme HUB) and Vall d’Hebron University Hospital.
Since 2017, the ERN-EuroBloodNet has been working to improve EHR health services through 5 Cross-cutting Fields of Action: Cross-border Health, Good Practices, Continuing Medical Education, Telemedicine and Clinical Trials and Research.
The network comprises 97 Health Care Providers (HCPs) from 24 European Union Member States and 11 European Patient Advocacy Groups (ePAG) affiliated with 11 different International or European Patient Networks and EURORDIS.
02/THE CHALLENGE
Vall d’Hebron, as a member of ERN EuroBloodNet, participates with other world-leading healthcare teams in the research, diagnosis, and treatment of EHR.
It was necessary to translate into English the different clinical practice guidelines available at the national level to facilitate the work of the professionals involved in this program. Hence, they needed a partner specialised in medical translation capable of managing large volumes of work in a demanding schedule since the guides were written in 8 different languages: Danish, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, Swedish, Czech, and Dutch.
In addition, another request that has made this project a significant challenge was the editing and adaptation of the format of the documents for subsequent translation.
03/THE SOLUTION
At Nóvalo, we designed a customised work system to meet the deadlines required by the client and the specific needs of a project like this. We also organised a team of technical translators and proofreaders specialising in medical translation, who are familiar with the sector’s terminology and writing style, to maintain a consistent and precise style in the contents.
To ensure the quality of these texts and give uniformity to the English language, the Nóvalo team developed a meticulous work process that included, among others, the creation of style guides in English and a glossary by language with the essential terminology. In addition, exhaustive quality control was followed at two levels: the first by language combination and the second at a general level to ensure that all the translated documentation maintained coherence, even if the sources were in different languages.
It was an exciting challenge in terms of translation and coordination of the project, in which Nóvalo had the confidence of ERN-EuroBloodNet at all times and in which our team proved to be up to the high standards of quality and knowledge required by such an important international project.
