The Challenge
For one of our clients, Affidea, a leading provider of diagnostic imaging solutions, we have recently executed a project that was challenging both in terms of its content and its scope as it included translation, revision and client review of 88 clinical policy documents and 55 GDPR policy documents into 15 languages: Bosnian, Croatian, Czech, French, Greek, German, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese, Serbian, Slovakian, Spanish and Turkish. The total wordcount was 2,400,402.80 net, or approximately 148,000 net per language, with a comparatively short deadline.
The Solution
Phase One: Project Setup
Right from the start, it was clear that this project would have to be executed in a cloud CAT environment. The review by the client’s subject-matter experts (SMEs) was an integral part of the process and they had to be trained to use a CAT tool, so we opted for Memsource due to its flexibility and ease of use. After the completion of the technical preparation phase and CAT training for the SMEs, the materials were first split into two sub-projects on the basis of the source material topics – translation of GDPR policies was assigned to one project manager and translation of clinical policies was assigned to another.
Before the main translation part took off, it was necessary to develop terminology bases with translations of specific medical, technical and legal terms in all 15 languages. Once the terms were extracted, translated and approved by the client’s SMEs, the project could begin.
Phase Two: Agile Translation
The sheer wordcount demanded splitting the materials into batches, which enabled work in iterations: as soon as translation of any of the five batches was approved by the client, it was immediately implemented and used as a blueprint for the subsequent batches.
Due to the short delivery deadline, some stages of the project overlapped. This was possible thanks to the use of cloud-based CAT technology, which allowed the editors to start editing a document as soon as it was completed by a translator, instead of waiting for all documents to be translated. This approach saved a lot of time in advance and ensured a better output quality.
The linguist teams for each of the language pairs were chosen on the basis of their previous experience in medical and GDPR-related translation experience and their overall track record and every translated document was reviewed by a second linguist team and a QA check was performed before the SME review, with the only major step remaining after the SME review the linguistic validation – the linguists checked and implemented the SME changes in documents.
This step was followed by a final QA check and export/technical editing of the translated materials in the native formats for delivery.
Workflow Structure
The Result
The agile approach enabled us to harmonize the work of numerous teams and produce a complex and voluminous translation project within a short turnaround frame.
Involvement of local SMEs who would be using the documents from the earliest stages of the project enabled us to develop and consistently implement verified terms across the files and served as an additional quality assurance layer.
Development of translation assets and smart use CAT infrastructure meant that translation costs were cut for more than 20% and delivered on time.