Are you looking for a company that offers medical translation services and has extensive experience in the area? At Nóvalo, we are fully aware of the responsibility and requirements inherent in the health sector since we have been translating for the leading companies in the market for decades.
Our extensive experience in this field has allowed us to manage projects of various kinds, always under the premise of guaranteeing accurate and safe texts for patients. We are aware that translation errors in this type of text can have severe consequences. Therefore, we implement rigorous quality controls so that the result is reliable.
Why is it essential to carry out a correct medical translation?
Accuracy is an essential issue in any translation, but when we refer to medical translations, this concept acquires an even greater relevance since people’s lives and health are at stake.
As a company that offers medical translation services, at Nóvalo, we have worked with different types of texts, from the most specialised ones aimed at doctors and health professionals (clinical trials and protocols, manuals and medical equipment software) to others that go directly to patients and families (informed consents, brochures, leaflets, questionnaires, to name a few).
Regardless of the recipient, the data must be truthful, reliable and not subject to ambiguity. The correct use of medical instruments or the effectiveness of a treatment, as well as its safety, depend directly on the fact that the wording of these texts is perfectly understandable and accurately conveys the content of the original. Or, as has happened on some occasions, the translation process has served to solve errors in the writing of the original since there are also cases in which errors have been detected in the source text. When translating them into another language and analysing the wording or content in detail, it has been possible to detect them.
Medical translation services offered at Nóvalo
The field of medicine is pervasive both in terms of its specialities and in the type of documentation demands. As a medical translation agency, our team of specialised translators has been training and acquiring experience in the various areas for which we offer our translation and localisation services:
- Translation of leaflets and clinical assays
- Translation of medical reports
- Clinical and technical documentation
- Translation of medical research and publications
- Manuals of medical equipment
- Translation of medical software and health applications
- Cultural and technical adaptation in medical translation
- Translation of brochures, advertising posters and information dossiers for patients
- Training courses for health professionals
Medical content localisation: adaptation to local medical terminologies and practices
As providers of medical translation services, we are aware of the importance of cultural adaptation of texts. In the case of the sanitary field, the demands of localisation are even more remarkable since not only are issues such as the adequacy of specific terms and expressions to different cultures addressed but in the translation process, the different regulatory agencies responsible for ensuring the safety and quality of said content are also involved.
As part of the adaptation of the contents, local regulatory bodies such as the European Medicines Agency (EMA) in Europe, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the USA, the World Health Organization (WHO), or the Association of Medicines of Latin America and the Caribbean (AMLAC), among others, establish a series of guidelines and standards for correct medical writing. In addition, each country has its national regulatory agency, such as the Spanish Agency for Medicines and Health Products (AEMPS), which is the case in Spain.
Another essential aspect of adaptation that determines the terminology of the text is the target audience of the text since the intention of the text itself varies. In the case of documents whose readers are going to be the patients, it is essential to adapt the terminology and the wording with the clear perspective that the recipient must understand well what happens to them, what they need, what treatment they should follow and with what guidelines. The use of technicalities in these texts would complicate understanding, and the text would lose its purpose. However, when these documents are addressed to health professionals, the terminology changes completely, and technicalities and expressions typical of medical slang are used.
Our medical translation process and technologies used
When we receive a medical translation assignment at Nóvalo, we start a process divided into several phases. The first step is to analyse the project in-depth, see what type of text it is, whom it is aimed at and what the client’s needs are in terms of languages and deadlines. From there, a project manager is assigned who will be responsible for communicating with the client and the production team (translators, proofreaders and technical team).
Before starting the translation task, we carry out an exhaustive analysis of the text to determine which parts may be more problematic, which need clarification or correction by the client, and which technical issues must be addressed so that the final result is equivalent to that received, etc. Thanks to this analysis, we can start the phase of prior documentation and preparation of reference material, such as style guides adapted to each client and the creation of glossaries for each language combination.
Once we have completed the reference preparation step and clarified doubts and disaggregated documents, the project manager will be responsible for forming the team that will participate in both the translation, revision and quality control phases.
The technical team is responsible for preparing the documents so that we can work with the assisted translation tool that best suits the project and, in this way, be able to share and create translation memories that will facilitate the work of maintaining consistency throughout the project and allow a fluid work by the entire team. In this phase, we will use memories owned by Nóvalo with similar texts, and we will link the glossaries prepared for each assignment in order to ensure that the terminology is accurate and appropriate for the speciality we have at hand.
The workflow for these medical translations always consists of translation, proofreading, quality controls, implementation of changes and final proofreading. As a medical translation agency, we subject the final text to various rigorous tests to ensure quality and accuracy.
Advantages of having Nóvalo’s professional team
Why do we think that at Nóvalo, you can find the best option for your needs? In our more than two decades of experience, we have faced all kinds of medical translation projects, which has allowed us to know in depth the requirements of this field and acquire valuable knowledge that we always put at the service of our clients. We have a large team of native translators with years of experience in medical translation which have been trained to address the different challenges offered by this speciality. In addition, during all these years, we have been adapting our processes to the technological demands of the moment and optimising these processes to be able to respond to the needs of our customers with quality and speed.