How To Find Professional Medical Translation Partners?

Translation in the medical field is quite seamless and challenging. Without the right medical translation services, patients from different countries who are not able to speak native languages, will not be able to understand anything related to diagnoses, prescriptions, etc. Therefore, finding a medical translation partner is very important.

Which translation partner is right for you and how to find them? This article will help you answer this question.

How Many Choices For Medical Translation Partners Are There?

There are three main types of medical translation partners you can work with.

#1. In-house Medical Translators

Some companies choose to have their own in-house translators who are in charge of translation projects in the company.

Pros

• • Urgency – The company only coordinates in-house translators. The team will assign and complete the project quickly.
  • Subject experts – In-house translators are medical translators who are familiar with the company’s style. They can make sure the target project is satisfactory.

Cons

• • Cost – Owning an in-house team of translators, your company needs to ensure employee benefits such as insurance, overtime pay, training costs, etc.
  • Capacity – The number of in-house translators of the company may not be able to handle too many medical translation projects in urgent time.

#2. Freelance Medical Translators

Freelance translators are the independent translators you must look up to working with. You can easily find them on LinkedIn or Upwork with the right keyword.

Pros

• • Cheap – You only pay for the number of projects they complete based on the contract. Project costs will be greatly reduced, but some freelancers may also charge higher translation costs.
  • Direct communication – You can save time by contacting freelancers directly if you want to adjust anything in your translation project.

Cons

• • Limited capabilities – A freelancer may specialize in translation only for a certain language pair. If you want to localize the project to multiple target languages, you need to find more freelancers.
  • The use of CAT tools is limited – The CAT tool is a great help in ensuring translation consistency. However, a freelancer may not support all CAT tools.

#3. Medical Translation Agency

Translation agencies or language service providers (LSPS) are your ideal source of translation partners.

Pros

• • Comprehensive service – Translation agencies provide a team of medical translators with full-step translation sequences and the ability to translate multiple language pairs. In addition, the translation agency can take on a large number of projects while still ensuring the quality of medical translations is really accurate. In other words, they can localize rather than simply translate.
  • CAT Tools – All translation agencies support CAT tools for your projects. It saves your company costs and ensures consistency for translations.

Cons

• • High price – Cooperation with translation agencies will cost more because of professional service.
  • Indirect communication – You have to go through an intermediary PM group to be able to contact the linguist.

How To Find Quality Medical Translation Partners?

Since translation in the medical field has gained enormously practical value, you should consider these useful tips below to find a high-quality medical translation partner for your upcoming projects.

#1. Word-of-mouth Recommendations

Asking for recommendations from colleagues and acquaintances can help you find a good translation partner. In case you are already working with a medical translator for a language pair, you can ask them for a suggestion if you need to translate your medical content into other language pairs. The translation community is small and close-knit, so they’ll probably know someone who’s a good fit.

#2. Search Engines

Today, many freelancers and translation agencies have public websites and detailing services. You can find your translation partner easily through a keyword search on Google. Suggestions for the medical localizing service you are looking for will be displayed. What you need to do is just choose a really quality translation partner.

#3. Association Directories

Medical translators can also be found in translation directories. Professional groups for translators and interpreters provide online directories of its members that you can use to discover a suitable provider for free.

Check the professional association directories for both the source and target language nations (where the language in the original document is spoken, or where the language in the translated document is spoken). The majority of the directories are in English, and you can usually refine your search by selecting the translator’s native language and subject expertise.

3 Tips For Getting High-Quality Medical Translation

After finding a good medical translation partner to cooperate with, you will need to focus on planning and preparing for the project. Check out our 3 effective tips below.

#1. Optimize Your Source Content Before Translation

Make sure you optimize your source content before giving it to translators. Because the medical translation is a difficult field. If your source content is inconsistent, it will be difficult for translators to make sense of your content. Here are some tips for optimizing content:

• • Remove any unnecessary parts
  • Make sure the source layout is logic
  • Avoid using text in graphics

#2. Prepare Medical Glossary For Translators

A glossary of medical translation terms is a collection of specialized terms that appear in the source content to be translated and their definitions. The glossary needs to include:

• • Terminology in the source language (Required)
  • Definition of specialized terms (Required)
  • Approved translation for terms (Optional)

#3. Work With Professional Medical Translation Agency 

Although the high price is a limitation in choosing a translation agency for your medical project. However, the price often comes with quality. It means that you should not work with any translation provider that offers you the lowest price. Make sure your translations are always of the highest quality by working with professional translation providers.

Translators undertaking medical translation projects must be linguists with a deep understanding of language pairs and specialized knowledge.

• • They must be native speakers or knowledgeable in the source language.
  • At least two years of experience in the translation industry and extensive medical knowledge are required.
  • Working experience in related fields.

If you are looking for a translation agency capable of meeting all the criteria mentioned above, GTE Localize is your perfect partner. GTE Localize has an extensive network of translators with multidisciplinary knowledge and the ability to serve different language pairs. Our team has many years of experience translating medical content for a wide range of partners. GTE Localize ensures your translations are localized qualitatively and fastly.

Contact us to get ready for a medical translation service and we’ll provide you with a free quote.