When you look for a company offering medical translation services, you need to find out about the translators’ expertise and the languages or dialects required. However, because prices vary with your needs, it helps to turn to a premium medical translation company in order to balance cost and expertise. Below are the best tips for choosing a medical translation service.
Translation or interpreting
The first point to clarify is whether you need translation or interpreting services, as the two are often confused.
Translation is a written conversion of language (text), while interpreting is a spoken rendering. Here we are talking about written medical translation, but most companies that provide professional language services also offer medical interpreting and other services relevant to the healthcare industry, such as telephone interpreting.
Do you need a translator specialized in medicine?
The short answer is “if in doubt, yes!” The risk of communication errors or translation errors in a medical document is high. Unlike business or everyday translation, poor legal and medical translation can have serious effects. The quality of medical information affects a patient’s decision-making ability and health.
Managing medical terminology
To understand better why quality medical translation services are needed, it is important to consider the accuracy of medical terms and their explanations.
Patients have the right to fully understand their diagnosis, so for a patient with limited knowledge of the language in which they receive care, the quality of the medical translation affects how well they understand the problems affecting them.
A lack of access to qualified resources can even lead to costlier treatments and unnecessary tests.
Translation takes more than knowing two languages
So how can the quality of medical translation services be guaranteed? At present, certification and accreditation standards for medical interpreters are more developed than those for medical translators. It is therefore important to find a medical translator with proven experience in medical translation.
Medical translators must comply with regulations and directives on confidentiality and data protection. These include the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Assessing the quality of medical translation
Characteristics of good medical translators
A good medical translation is done almost entirely by a human. The best translators work in a translation environment where they can refer to resources such as medical glossaries, style guides and colleagues. This is why many expert translators receive their workflow through language service companies.
Characteristics of companies with superior medical translation services
The best companies comply with international quality standards such as ISO 17100 and ISO 9001 to deliver high-quality translation and localization services. Good companies let third parties audit their performance regularly. And of course, do not overlook the fact that a good service should meet the required turnaround time!
Characteristics of a good, complete translation
What should you expect from a medical translation? Medical documents in the target language should arrive by the agreed delivery time. They should also have the same format and number of pages as the original medical documents. If necessary, an authorized translation will also come with a certificate of accuracy. Notarized translations will be signed by a notary public.
How much does a medical translation cost?
The cost of a medical translation is not standard. But that is good news if you have short medical documents to translate. In general, medical translation services are priced per word rather than per page. You can read more about how translation pricing works.
Prices vary with language and deadline
The price of medical translation services varies with many parameters. Among them are the rarity and complexity of the language pair involved.
A shorter turnaround time for translation services can also lead to higher costs, known as rush fees.
If you need an exact price, always request a quote, stating the number of words in the document, the language pair you are interested in and the turnaround time you require.
Prices vary with length and medical terminology
Longer medical translations cost more. Certain medical specialties require a higher level of expertise from the translator, and prices rise accordingly. Examples of specialized medical documents include informed consent forms, clinical data and manuals for medical devices.
When translations require certification from the company providing the medical translation service, there may be an additional fee. Legalization of an authorized medical translation can also raise the price, depending on the company.
Reducing costs with technology
Avoid costly duplication in translated medical documents
Protect your budget by choosing a company that does not charge several times for translating identical phrases. Translation memory software avoids the cost of duplicate translation. It also ensures consistency across documents.
And while we are on the subject of avoiding high prices, some translation companies distinguish between documents with different densities and complexity of medical language and charge you accordingly. This reduces the cost of simple or routine documents, because some documents do not require intensive specialization.
Human translation, optimized by technology
It should be clear from the start: the human brain remains the only viable way to get a properly translated medical document. Even without specialized medical terminology involved, only a bilingual mind can capture the necessary nuance and direction. Medical translation also calls for additional knowledge and discretion. That does not mean technology cannot be used to assist the translator in rendering the text efficiently and accurately.