How to control the quality of pharmaceutical translation companies


Release time:

2020-01-16

Quality control is the key to the survival and development of medical translation companies. Many translation companies are capable of handling medical translation work, but clients often find the quality to be poor upon submission

Quality control is the key to the survival and development of medical translation companies. Many translation companies are capable of medical translation work, but clients often find the quality to be poor upon submission. The main reason is the lack of professional translators. Whether a translation company can perform well in medical translation depends on whether there are professional translators to support it.

There are different translation quotes in the market. Many units or individuals obtain cooperation opportunities with clients through low prices. This is because translation companies often handle manuscripts through subcontracting. Subcontracting refers to passing the manuscript to part-time translators to earn the price difference. After the translators submit their work within the stipulated time, due to a lack of professional knowledge, the full-time reviewers at the translation company often can only modify the manuscript's format. As a result, quality control often suffers significantly. Part-time translators are mostly students, some of whom are not even from medical backgrounds, which often leads to poor readability of the translations.

So, how can a professional medical translation company ensure quality control?

First, medical translation companies must have full-time staff with a medical background (before cooperation, clients should first check their official website to see if the company specializes in translation in this field). Judging whether it is a professional medical translation company can be done through its works or articles. A good professional background is one of the essential skills for practitioners. Additionally, it must be clear that it is a translation company. There are various ways to check if it is registered with the industrial and commercial bureau. With the deepening of Weibo marketing, many translation companies have Weibo accounts, and obtaining certification from Sina Weibo is also one of the ways to identify the company.

Secondly, the quality of the translators is key to determining the content of the translation. After the project manager of the professional translation company confirms cooperation with the client, they organize terms and glossaries by reading literature and consulting relevant materials. They discuss the first draft with the staff. After this, the translators need to check relevant references for further understanding. Then, the translation can begin. The benefit of this approach is to avoid chaotic or incorrect translations. Medical translation requires a high level of accuracy, so translators must understand the meaning of the article when translating. If you do not understand a sentence or content, you must check the references or related materials. You cannot guess randomly. Therefore, translators must not only have a good professional background but also possess very skilled information retrieval abilities. Generally, those with this ability have a master's degree or higher and have received good training in examination skills. Simple language workers cannot be professionals. After all, they cannot be experts.

Thirdly, after the translators submit their translations, the subsequent revisions rely entirely on full-time reviewers. To a large extent, the reviewers' job is to assess the logic and accuracy of the translations. For example, in the translation of technical documents, whether the translations provided by the translators have technical defects or non-standard expressions, this stage is to identify problems in a timely manner and communicate, which must be done accurately before submitting the translation to the client.

In summary, the key to quality control in professional medical translation companies is the reserve of professionals with a medical background. Only with professional translators and reviewers can we ensure effective quality control!