The MediLingua difference

After 3 decades of honing our craft in medical translation, we’ve seen every kind of translation error. And we know just how serious they can be to healthcare organisations like yours.

To keep your organisation safe, we have a single focus, niche project managers and triple-check quality assurance.

Difference 1

Single focus

At MediLingua, we have worked on nothing but medical texts since 1996. ‍

After thousands and thousands of hours working for hundreds of companies like yours, we understand you. We keep your terms straight and your meaning clear without interrupting you with needless questions. So you can relax knowing that your documents are safe in the hands of the experts.

Difference 2

Niche project managers

Our project managers each specialise in specific areas of medical translation. So whether you’re in dental implants, clinical trials or medicines, they know your ecosystem inside out.

They advise you on what you need, prepare your document for translation, select a niche translator and reviser, handle queries before delivery to save you time, and coordinate the implementation of your feedback after delivery.

Difference 3

Triple-check quality assurance

At MediLingua, quality assurance isn’t just a checklist before we press SEND. It’s an entire in-house team and a strong point of difference in our workflow. Our specialised QA editors spot, flag and resolve errors, from inconsistent terms and abbreviations to ambiguous wordings and silly typos. And they do this across hundreds of pages and dozens of languages. 

With our quality assurance editors, you can keep your documents consistent across languages and make the right impression wherever you’re read.

Protect your patients and reputation with extra quality assurance

Clear meaning

We ensure your translations convey the same meaning in every language. Now readers everywhere use your product exactly as you intend, reducing the risk of confusion.

Consistent terms

We create custom checklists to spot, flag and resolve errors in consistency. Readers in every language will thank you for sticking to one term, one meaning.

Uniform quality

We don’t just fix problems in one translation. We flag it and check that it’s correct in every translation of your source text so you make the right impression in every language.

Tidy presentation

Because we look at the big picture, we spot hard-to-notice errors in spacing, numerals, typeface, capitalisation and punctuation that may annoy your readers.

Translation quality assurance for every project

The quality assurance team triple-checks every project that comes through our doors. 

You need a trained eye to check large volumes of text in multiple languages. And you need a special kind of experience to anticipate and correct errors while leaving a translation as intact as possible. 

Luckily for you, this is exactly the training and experience our quality assurance editors possess. They handle all the little details. So you can confidently send your translation wherever it needs to go. 

Steer clear of errors and keep your image consistent with the MediLingua difference

Get a quote for your project now

FAQs

If you’d like extra reassurance about how we guarantee the quality of the translations we deliver, read on. And if you have questions, we’re here to help.

What is translation quality?

Quality is subjective. We all have our preferences. (Don’t be shy about communicating these, by the way.) But at MediLingua, 5 elements of translation quality are non-negotiable:

Consistency: The translation must be consistent as regards terminology, data and style. It must also be consistent with your previous documents and across languages.

Suitability: The translation must suit the needs of your target audience as well as your project aims.

Accuracy: The translation must mirror your original meaning as closely as possible. 

Presentation: The translation must comply with the rules of spelling, grammar, punctuation, layout and abbreviations of each target language. The last thing you want is a silly mistake ruining all your hard work.

Process: A quality translation takes no shortcuts. Humans make mistakes. The simplest way to minimise mistakes is to follow a process.

What are the 5 steps in your translation quality process?

Every translation project goes through 5 steps. Here is each person’s role:

  1. The project manager analyses your document. They give the translator a full brief, templates and glossaries. They also explain any specific requirements you may have.
  2. The translator translates your document using their knowledge of writing, editing, language, culture and healthcare.
  3. The reviser edits the translation against your original document. They ensure it is fit for purpose and mirrors your original style, data and meaning.
  4. The quality assurance (QA) editor checks the translation against your glossaries and across your brand languages to make it as consistently excellent as possible.

The project manager sends you a fully revised, quality-controlled translation.

Is extra quality assurance overkill?

In our experience, every translation contains at least 1 error. 

Many errors are minor. They might annoy a reader, but they won’t land you in trouble. 

The errors we often fix are more serious. They happen because of confusing sentences or silly mistakes in the source text. Sometimes our translator or reviser finds a solution. In which case, our quality assurance editors incorporate the solution into all the translations in your project. Other times, none of the translators or revisers can solve the errors. When this happens, our quality assurance team mops them up directly or comes to you to troubleshoot them together.

And yes, every once and a while, we catch a major error. This is when you’re glad to have our quality assurance team keeping you safe before errors like these come back to bite you. 

Just so you know, our quality assurance is best suited to big, technical, multi-language projects. This is where a single error can cause mayhem – but only if you don’t have our quality assurance editors on hand to sort it out in every text across every language.

What is the advantage of an in-house quality assurance team?

Because quality assurance is an in-house step, the same editors check your translation projects every time. This helps them get to know your needs, guidelines and sector. Working side-by-side also helps them troubleshoot issues together and problem-solve faster.

What does all this mean for you? Faster, consistently excellent translations and less time explaining your needs and preferences.

What does your QA team do that a translator, reviser or project manager can’t do?

Translators and revisers focus on meaning and style. Project managers handle customer queries, translator comments, quotations, feedback, testing and more.

Our quality assurance specialists perform special types of quality checks all day, every day. And by taking a macro view of your translation project, they can identify issues in one translation of your original document and check that it is correctly and consistently handled in the other translations.

Do you use software or AI in your translation quality process?

Yes, we use a range of tools to carry out automated checks. Obviously, these checks don’t replace the real-world knowledge of our human translators, revisers, quality assurance editors and project managers. But they speed up our process and help us identify problems. 

We use AI to create custom checklists based on your guidelines and glossaries. Because AI has no direct access to your documents, strict confidentiality is maintained.