Skip to content
Logo Avantpage
Home Blogs The Medical Translation Process: How is it different than other translations?

The Medical Translation Process: How is it different than other translations?

When you’re looking for a language service provider to translate content for your business, you want your translators to be familiar with the ins and outs of your industry. If you work in healthcare or life sciences, that means finding a language service provider that specializes in medical translations.
 
Medical translation encompasses a wide range of content relating to healthcare, such as training materials for medical devices, health insurance claims, clinical trials, and patient care instructions, just to name a few. Due to the sensitive nature of medical documents, most countries have strict regulations on the way these documents are handled during the translation process, so it’s critical that you work with specialized language service providers who are compliant with said regulations.
 
Medical translations tend to follow a more rigorous process than general translations — i.e., less specialized, non-sensitive texts like administrative documents, letters, and webpage content. Because medical documents often need to be delivered within a short timeframe, translators have to work with extremely short turnaround times, sometimes in as little as 4 hours. At the same time, medical translations cannot skimp on quality — these texts are often quite high-stakes and a decline in a translation’s quality can lead to a decline in the patient’s care.
 
Additionally, regulations like the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) mandate a degree of privacy for patients, requiring language service providers to take special security measures, like masking patient health information (PHI) and storing all data on US-based servers.
 
In this blog post, we’ll take a look at the key ways in which the medical translation process differs from general translations. We’ll also explain how these differences ensure timely and high-quality care for patients with limited English proficiency (LEP).

3 Key Aspects of the Medical Translation Process

There are three main ways in which translating medical documents differs from general translation:

These aren’t just a matter of access — timely, high-quality medical translations enable improved care of LEP patients. By adopting a more rigorous translation process for these documents, we can create a more equitable and inclusive healthcare system for patients with LEP.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these aspects:

Timeline

A delay in care can have a negative impact on a patient’s health outcome — as such, the translation process must take place as quickly as possible. At Avantpage, for example, we often work with health plan providers to translate and mail member letters to patients within seven to eight hours. This fast process allows us to help our clients meet strict regulations that such letters be delivered to the patient within a 72-hour timeframe. Such timeliness is critical because it minimizes any delays in patient care. In turn, this means patients experience improved health outcomes, and also protects healthcare providers from legal troubles.

For example, a 2013 report from the National Health Law Program describes a medical malpractice suit in which a seven-year-old boy was misdiagnosed with strep due to his LEP father not receiving language access services in a timely fashion. By the time he was correctly diagnosed with Kawasaki’s disease, the child had experienced damage to his organs; when the case was settled, the provider had to pay more than $100,000 in damages and legal fees. In this case, timely translation services would have saved the boy’s organs and would have cost significantly less than the legal fees associated with the malpractice suit.

Quality

Although translators typically work on an expedited timeline for medical translations, they can’t sacrifice quality. Due to the vital nature of their content, medical translations have very little room for error — it’s absolutely crucial that they be of the highest quality possible, as even minor errors can have a significant negative impact on the quality of patient care. Medical translations must be culturally and linguistically appropriate so as to ensure that patients can easily comprehend all medical communications — as if they were originally developed in their preferred language.

Medical texts often feature complex, highly specific terminology, requiring translators who specialize in and are familiar with such terminology. Errors in medical translation can have a life-or-death effect, potentially worsening a patient’s condition, so it’s important to work with translators who have a proven track record in the medical translation field.

The medical translation process also involves a series of in-depth quality assurance (QA) measures, to make sure that the final product meets industry standards. Proofreaders ensure that there are no typographical errors, while QA specialists run various tests to make sure that terminology is translated accurately and clearly. The QA process is particularly rigorous for medical translations, though it’s not uncommon for general translations to undergo a similar QA process.

Compliance

There are various regulations in place that language service providers must comply with when producing medical translations. The most notable is HIPAA, which requires healthcare providers to protect the privacy of their patients. When contracting medical translation services, you should make sure that your provider is equipped to fully comply with these regulations.

One way language service providers might do this is by masking any patient health information (PHI) before it gets to the translators. Individual translators should not be able to access any data that could compromise the patient’s privacy, meaning details like name, social security number, address, etc. should all be removed before translation. Once the final translation is complete, these details can be added back in at the very last step. Technology like Avantpage’s AvantShield enables seamless PHI masking and ensures HIPAA-compliant medical translations.

Another consideration to keep in mind is your language service provider’s geographic location. In some cases, patient data must be stored on US grounds. Additionally, there may be situations that require projects to be handled only by US-based linguists and project managers.

Summary

Because of all the special considerations that need to be made during the medical translation process, it’s important that healthcare providers work with language service providers who are deeply familiar with medical translation.

To recap, here’s how medical translations differ from the standard translation process:

At Avantpage, we work closely with healthcare providers to ensure that medical translations meet their requirements for timeliness, quality and compliance. If you’re looking for a language service provider that can help you provide LEP patients with culturally and linguistically appropriate services, contact us today at [email protected] or (530) 750-2040.