Translation

Medical device translation is one of the most sensitive fields for every language service provider.

Translation and localization aren’t the same thing. Yet, they’re frequently used interchangeably. This is especially the case in life sciences, where accuracy and legal compliance are often the backbone of well-performed translation.

In today’s interconnected economy, the difference between companies that thrive globally and those that struggle often comes down to one critical factor: how they approach language strategy and localization planning. While many organizations still rely on intuition or outdated market assumptions, forward-thinking companies are embracing a fundamentally different approach—one powered by data, precision, and strategic insight. 

As large language models (LLMs) like GPT redefine how we translate and communicate across borders, one persistent issue remains: AI still struggles with South Slavic languages — especially Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian, and Slovenian. 

In today’s digital age, the landscape of language services has undergone a dramatic transformation. With the advent of free translation tools, many wonder about the future of language service providers (LSPs). At Ciklopea, we’re not only adapting to these changes, but have evolved to offer unparalleled value in this new ecosystem.

In the evolving landscape of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), the role of linguistic annotation has become more important than ever. As companies and developers work to build smarter systems, from chatbots to translation tools, the need for high-quality language data is paramount. But what exactly is linguistic annotation, and why is it so important?

In an increasingly globalised world, research and clinical trials often span multiple countries and cultures. This expansion necessitates the accurate translation of materials to ensure that all participants, regardless of their native language, can understand and respond appropriately. This is where linguistic validation comes into play.

In our previous blog post, we tackled the common pitfalls of translation and localization projects and programs. Now, let’s dive into how a streamlined 3-step process can turn these challenges into opportunities and drive your international expansion.

It’s a story that’s as old as time. Every time a new technology emerges, you have two groups of people. One group is excited about the potential applications and the other panics about the change ahead and potential disruption. AI in the translation industry has sparked similar reactions.

Finding the right partner to provide you with professional translation services takes time, and it’s not an easy task. In fact, it’s not all that different from expanding your in-house team. You need to define needs and expectations, check candidate qualifications and experience, ask for references, and more besides.

Welcome to a glimpse into the world of language and culture bridging, as we celebrate International Translation Day. On this special occasion, we sat down with professional translators to delve into their reflections on the significance of their chosen profession.

If you’ve decided to make your website, marketing materials, and customer support available in multiple languages, you already have a good chance of gaining a competitive advantage. However, it’s not easy to ensure consistency in your multilingual communications.

We’ve reached a momentous milestone, and the excitement is palpable as we get ready to pop open the metaphorical champagne and throw confetti all around! Two decades ago, a vision was born that would forever change the way we connect, understand, and communicate across the boundaries of culture and geography. Bootstrapping a language services company wasn’t easy, but it was definitely worth it.

So you’ve decided to translate your website. Congratulations on your decision! Making your website accessible in different languages can increase your conversion rates and create a more meaningful experience for your target audience. Not only that, but it also helps you establish trust with your site visitors and build a positive brand image.

Accurate translation is essential across all industries. So why are we emphasizing its importance in marketing?

Wherever you look nowadays, AI is the talk of the town. Just think about ChatGPT, DALL-E, or similar AI systems, and you’ll see why people are so divided when it comes to the direction in which the advancement of this technology will take us.

Internationalization or i18n is the concept of product/service design that facilitates expansion into foreign markets (or globalization) through localization. The term is chiefly used in the software localization domain, but it can be easily applied to any other field. In this article, we take a closer look at how the internalization principles can be successfully applied to content production to make the localization process smoother, cheaper and leaner.

Are you planning an international marketing strategy to expand your customer base? Then you’ll need to explain your distinct brand identity to reach new areas.

Is the tone of your brand professional and serious or informal and filled with slang and other colloquialisms? Make sure your translator knows this!

When launching a product or service to a specific local market, it is vital to ’’speak their language’’ and making your product or service accessible in various dialects is merely the absolute minimum.

The localization landscape is extremely fragmented, and you probably noticed that it may be a bit confusing to define what types of services you really need, as well as how to deal with the non- familiar industry terminology.

In literally every survey that we have ever conducted among our clients from the pharmaceutical and medical devices industries, accurate terminology has always been singled out as the primary concern in translation for these sectors. In this article, we will take a closer look at the reasons for this and how the translation technologies can help us address this issue and ensure accuracy of terminology.

In almost every survey that we have ever conducted in our efforts to learn more about the expectations of our clients, turnaround time is featured among the top 3 challenges that our clients want to see resolved.

Patient-facing content includes all medical and pharmaceutical materials targeted at patients and end users who are not necessarily familiar with expert terminology and procedures.

Depending on their purpose, these materials may cover a wide range of topics, from legal information to instructions for use of medical devices, and all of this must be conveyed in a clear and unambiguous manner to make the information understandable to the non-expert target audiences.

We may perceive translation in various ways – it may be good, bad, correct, incorrect, fluent, awkward, poetic, mechanical and so on – but it is easy to forget that translation is actually an asset. To be more precise, our painstakingly and successfully localized materials for specific markets are assets simply by virtue of their function – they generate profit, reduce expenses and improve sales.

Editable file is one of the language industry’s magic phrases that activates certain powers such as cost/time optimization. The reason is simple – editable files can be easily imported in CAT tools and thus enable the localization teams to apply the carefully developed processes of linguistic and technical adaptation, quality control and optional DTP. Simply put – there is no localization process and reliable quality control without the CAT software and CAT software can only be used with editable files.

Every serious language service provider has a quality management system in place that may include various steps depending on the project requirements. However, these quality management systems are always built around the two major phases of translation/localization project – translation and revision (also known as bilingual editing) that are performed by two individual linguists or linguist teams.

In our everyday work as Project Managers, we often tend to direct most of our attention to our end-product, i.e. a delivered translation. However, we should sometimes hit pause and consider how different clients influence our workflow and how we can adapt our processes accordingly.

After several years of successful cooperation, we decided to learn more about Marija Omazić, full professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences of the University of Osijek and the chair of the master’s programme in translation at the Department of English. She shared with us the joys of working with students and the details about many projects she was involved in.

This time we had a chat with terminologist Siniša Runjaić. He shared with us how one becomes an expert for terminology and glossaries, and told us a little bit more about his past work experience and memorable projects.

When I first started writing this article, I had to decide how I’m going to style the head noun of the title. Is it e-Learning with a hyphen or without it and what’s the difference anyway? So, I did a little research and found out that the former was used in the earlier days when the concept was still new and unfamiliar to many. But as it was rising and slowly becoming a regular part of our lives, we dropped the hyphen so we could save ourselves from pressing one more key of the keyboard. That’s how I got to learn something new, even if it’s as banal as learning how to style a word.

That dreadful phrase bad translation has two distinct meanings – first, there is the obvious one, a text (or any other material) replete with errors in meaning, style, grammar and orthography and second, the more serious one, including delayed and cancelled product launches, loss of time, resources and energy and, most dreadful of them all, negative representation on a foreign market, which is also the price of a bad translation.

How to prevent it?

The amount of textual materials used before, during and after clinical research is often massive as they include a wide range of documents composed by healthcare professionals, legal and financial experts and patients. If any of these documents needs to be updated or changed for any reason, amending and updating the translated versions may be difficult and time-consuming.

Luckily, there are processes and technologies designed to make these actions painless.

Preparation of requests for proposal (RFP) is a serious and painstaking task that – when translation is included – may easily become even more complex. We might have a few tips for you that may help you avoid this being a challenge, find a reliable language solution provider and run a successful RFP.

Transcreation is most definitely not one of the things that spring to mind when we talk about the medical translation or localization of pharmaceutical materials. With all the seriousness of study protocols, summaries of product characteristics and correspondences with the regulatory bodies, we tend to forget that medical and pharmaceutical companies also need marketing solutions to propel their business and reach their customers and clients.

It can sometimes take a lot of time and effort to adapt to working with a new client – particularly on complex projects for a mature client with established and strict procedures that need to be followed – but good coordination, patience and understanding of the client’s requirements ultimately yields positive results.

The task of language professionals is essentially the same across industries and can always be summarized as helping companies and organizations communicate their messages to the target audiences, partners and clients. In this article we take a look at what medical translators need to know to make this communication possible in the vast and the diverse world of life sciences.

Pharmaceutical and medical industries are the two biggest players in the life sciences sector who frequently launch and sell their products on the global markets. Of course, to do so, they need to approach each of these markets with the utmost care. We are all their customers and we all have different healthcare needs and desires.

Hot on the heels of our article on machine translation, it’s now time to discuss computer-assisted translation or CAT.

Once when I was a kid, I was passing by a car wash which had the big written sign “Machine washing and polishing” with a friend who asked me, all amazed, “Wow, they have machines to wash the cars?!” And the guy who worked there heard him and replied, mildly disappointed “Do I look like a machine to you?” We did not expect that, but he, indeed, was still a human being. Same goes with machine translation (MT).

Copywriters use a variety of stylistic devices to create catchy and effective marketing messages. Most of the time, though, these devices only work in the source language and can easily get lost in translation. This is where transcreation or creative translation comes into play.

Translations are one of those things that you only really notice once they’ve gone wrong. The internet is full of jokes about bad translations, which although may be funny, are actually a very serious issue for all stakeholders. Quality Assurance (also known as QA) is one of the steps taken within the language industry to prevent translation errors.

Terminology management is a powerful tool that saves time, energy, and money, especially when used in conjunction with translation memories and CAT tools.

In this article we take a look at the most common opportunities and challenges to translation productivity.

The Atomic Era conviction that computers will eliminate the need for translators – or even the need to learn foreign languages at all – within a few short years still persists. But will it?

In addition to its numerous obvious benefits, professional management of translation assets preserves the integrity of PILs and similar medical and pharmaceutical documents.

The Pareto principle or the 80-20 rule in its simplest form states that, for better or worse, roughly 80% of the effect comes from 20% of the causes.

The price of a bad, awkward or inaccurate translation is too steep, making the price of a good, professional human translation the long run reasonable and low.

The world is big and replete with possibilities. The Internet is constantly growing more multilingual by the hour and reflecting these possibilities. Yet, picking the right one for your business may be tricky.

The main benefits of this language services model are process optimization and the reduction of costs and time, as well as improved translation quality and consistency.

Тhere are substantial differences between working with freelance translators and an LSP. This article is about the most important of these differences. TEP process

Translated and localized website is speaking to people on the local market. A multilingual SEO strategy is required to make it speak to the search engines on the local market as well.

The massive amount of life sciences texts being translated to almost every written language of the world every day is essentially an active exchange of information on the cutting-edge life sciences products, procedures and development that are constantly widening the lexical stock of the target languages and thus make a valuable contribution to the scientific arenas of the target territories.

The continually rising e-commerce websites that represent one of the most vital segments of online business may benefit the most from the advantages of the translation proxy.

This type of translation services uses proxy servers to render multilingual versions of a website

As a follow-up to our article 10 Questions Good Translation Companies Will Ask You, we bring you an article on information you should share with your LSP before your translation project starts.

Toponyms are the names of different geographical elements. They refer to real places and have a specific historical-political context, and therefore it is important to translate them in the right way.

If your potential translation provider asks you some of these questions, it means that you are dealing with a company that truly knows the business.

Internet and SMS communications have helped in the creation of a specific type of informal written communication.