The Background
A network of medical device and prosthetic companies wanted to create a cohesive web presence for its subsidiaries and translate their websites into several European languages. Many of the websites needed to feature products in a way that showed compassion to patients and appealed to website users. Each company had up to eight different specialized departments.
The Challenge
Our client needed to consolidate the product websites of its five main companies onto a single website. Each company sent content for us to include on the main website, and the content included medical product descriptions, some client-facing language, and UI text as well—all across a range of medical specialties. The finished product also needed to be translated into German, Russian, Italian, Spanish, and French. Each website had about 100,000 words to translate, though the German website had 254,400 words.
In-country reviewers would check the translated pieces, and the company wanted a simple system that wouldn’t require users to learn a new system to review the sites.
The Solution
Over the course of seven months, we developed a process to work with the client’s template format and translated it into each language. We then sent the translated text to the medical company’s contact in-country for their custom edits.
The process was relatively simple—translation, editing, proofreading, and a few rounds of Linguistic Quality Assurance (LQA). We needed to ensure that we were ISO 9001 certified, in addition to the translation-specific ISO 17100 certification we’ve had since 2015.
Attaining this 9001 certification helped us translate our quality process across industries, and gave us and our clients the ability to be on the same page about quality standards.
Finally, to ensure that our tone was patient-centric, we used transcreation strategies to create any patient-facing material and guided our linguists to translate empathetically in awareness of what patients using the devices might be experiencing.
The Result
We achieved ISO 9001 certification in less than three weeks, to quickly comply with our client’s quality standards.
Having the right team made all the difference in helping us efficiently complete this project. By selecting good medical linguists to translate the websites, we reduced the need for in-country reviewers to correct mistranslated words. We used a simple Word document format to allow in-country experts the greatest ease when making their final changes.
And finally, this project prompted us to build new translation management databases specifically for medical devices.
About Argos
With expertise in over 150 languages, Argos partners with clients to build robust programs for engaging multilingual content. We also understand how critical it is to be precise in translation of materials relating to the life sciences, and in particular, involving patient experience and safety. Argos has the quality standards and industry knowledge to provide specific and meticulous translations, while providing ISO 9001 and ISO 17100 compliant services.
Our translation and localization expertise spans:
- eLearning Systems & Content
- Product Information & Overviews
- ePRO Tools & Platforms
- Life Science Marketing & Websites
- Clinical Trial Recruitment Platforms
- Patient Retention Tools
- Medical Communications
- Medical Device Manuals & User Guides
- Patient Recruitment Campaigns
