Monthly translations of medical directives into 5 languages for a French insurance company
- 70,000 average words
- English to French, Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese
- Budget Pack, Normal Turnaround
The challenge: This was an unusual request from a client for whom we are used to translating legal, financial and corporate communication documents. Just for a change, this time the subject was health and medical. In general, we don’t accept projects that don’t come under our specific areas of expertise. Although the project involved a certain risk, the volume, the multilingual requirements and our relationship with the client made us change our mind. And that was the kick-off for nine months of pure adventure!
The solution: We did not dive in head first since the client wanted to make sure that we were able to deal with medical documents. This type of job requires precise terminology and a perfect understanding of the kinds of disease and technology covered, not to mention a clear and natural writing style. To test the waters, we did some preliminary translations for the client, who approved these test documents. We then farmed out the project to a narrow circle of trusted freelancers possessing the requisite knowledge and experience. Although this was a rather costly solution, it allowed us to translate the documents into the 5 target languages to the client’s full satisfaction. As the project spanned several months with new texts coming in for translation every 3-4 weeks, we had to obtain a long-term commitment from each language team so that they would stay on the job until completion, which they did. CAT (computer-assisted translation) tools proved extremely useful in guaranteeing consistency across the board.
The payoff: By taking up the challenge of this medical project for a long-standing client, we succeeded yet again in fulfilling the client’s needs whilst further strengthening the trust it has placed in us over the years. And it’s not over yet… the client recently contacted us with a follow-up to this project! By opting for our Budget Pack, the client was able to approve our translations by proofreading them itself and, above all, reduce its costs to an absolute minimum!