Litigation involving speakers of multiple languages has become an everyday occurrence. Real-time, consecutive interpretation services may be required for international business disputes, expert testimony, and to meet the needs of an increasingly multi-lingual U.S. society.

However, anytime words are handed from one person to another, there’s a potential for problems. Remember playing “telephone” as kids? That game was played between speakers of the same language and usually resulted in some pretty laughable sentences. It gets much more complicated – and serious – when professionals and their businesses need to communicate across multiple languages and cultures in a court of law.

Potential pitfalls

Here are four of the top concerns that arise when multilingual litigation requires the use of an interpreter:

• Influence: An interpreter is an influential participant in litigation with the power to quietly shape testimony. From the perspective of a defendant, witness, or expert, an interpreted response often leads to the question: “Whose words are these, and who was it that chose them?” This is not an insignificant query. An attorney’s strategy typically depends on a very deliberate use of wording, and a precise translation of a carefully constructed phrase may not exist in another tongue.

• Mistranslation: Phrasing a question to elicit a usable answer can be undermined by interpretation, as noted by the Association of Corporate Counsel (ACC), which cites a study of Spanish-to-English legal interpretation. That research found that “even consecutive interpretation (the most accurate form) mistranslated leading questions one-third of the time. In the context of depositions, the accuracy rate for leading questions dropped to 55%.” One way to avoid such errors is to keep questions simple and clear, yet still strategically purposeful.

• Timing: When every question and answer needs to be spoken twice — in the source language and by the interpreter — things take twice as long. This is worrisome for two reasons: 1) It can make the jury impatient and 2) the court may at some point have to assess legal fees to be paid by one party to the other for the additional time.

• Disputes: Cost increases also come into play if there is a dispute regarding the accuracy of interpretations in depositions or court. Translation disagreements add to the length of and complexity of the litigation process, and, if they can’t be resolved quickly, can affect the clarity of deposition transcripts and of court records.

A judge’s discretion

Though the right to an interpreter in court is viewed as being implied by the Fifth, Sixth, and Fourteenth Amendments, and by Title IV of the Civil Rights Act, it largely remains up to judges to decide whether or not the use of an interpreter is necessary, and judges tend to be parsimonious about this. (One exception is in litigation brought by the U.S. government, where the Court Interpreters Act requires the providing of interpreters for non-English speakers.)

The most obvious consideration a judge will have is whether or not a non-English speaker or a limited English speaker (LEP) can be understood. In such cases, there’s usually agreement between the court and attorneys regarding interpretation. If none is provided by the plaintiff or defendant, or if there’s a dispute regarding an interpreter, the court can appoint one of its own choosing.

More difficult are situations where there is some English proficiency on the part of a witness, but less than 100%. A judge may step in to make a decision as to the need for interpretive services to avoid giving one side an unfair advantage or if the court is concerned that language issues are likely to cause confusion in the courtroom and complicate the court record.

An attorney’s choices

In the deposition, an attorney seeking to capture testimony will assess the English-speaking capabilities of each deponent. When speaking with LEPs, it’s very much a strategic call, taking into account not only the need for a faithful interpretation of the testimony, but also the deponent’s comfort level with communicating in English.

Whoever is representing the deponent must likewise determine how to best ensure their client’s testimony is accurately rendered. If they feel the interpreter is either prone to error or the falsification of testimony, a check interpreter can be employed to raise objections one-by-one during the deposition or afterward.

How to deploy the check interpreter is a strategy call as well. Continually interrupting to offer corrections can cause confusion both during the process and in the transcript, and it’s something a judge may be unhappy about later on during a trial. On the other hand, remaining silent too long can be misconstrued as waiving objections, as in a case where issues were raised after the primary interpreter had left the deposition.

Regarding the trial, an attorney must assess how each non-English speaker or LEP will be best presented to the judge and/or jury. It may be that using an interpreter is required for clarity, or it may be that an LEP will be more persuasive in his or her own voice even with minor language issues present. And, once more, the opposing team has its own considerations, including the impression they’d prefer a witness to make. They may also want a check interpreter in court.

An ounce of prevention

Putting aside nuisance lawsuits and cases where costs are deliberately driven up as a strategy, most participants don’t want litigation to cost more than it needs to. In cases where language issues are anticipated, the best solution — where possible — is for counsel representing both sides to work together to pre-empt issues. For example:

• The expense of a check interpreter can be avoided if both sides can come to agreement on a single linguist.
• Both teams can agree to use English testimony wherever possible.
• In some cases, it’s clear ahead of time that the meanings of certain phrases are likely to be central to the resolution of the dispute. These can be collected and their meanings negotiated in advance of depositions. If agreement is impossible, a consensus on usable alternative phrases may be attainable. If not, the parties can at least devise a plan for their later reconciliation.

Looking forward

As multilingual court proceedings become even more common, it’s likely that statutory guidelines will further clarify the role of interpretation in litigation. Even so, while sometimes the need for interpretation is obvious, it’s likely to remain a strategic tool an attorney has at his or her disposal — one that carries with it both benefits and pitfalls — and an extra factor for courts to consider.

The American Community Survey (ACS) is a yearly study of U.S. citizens performed by the U.S. Census Bureau that provides a much more granular view of the U.S population than the full census that takes place once a decade. According to the latest available ACS data, surveyed in 2016, 21.6% of the people living in the United States speak a language other than English at home. Of these, nearly 40% speak English “less than well.”

For whatever difficulties this may cause in their daily lives, when these people seek medical care, the language barrier can become downright dangerous or even deadly. Protecting their safety is viewed as a critical civil rights issue addressed in Section 1557 of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). Federally funded hospitals are, in fact, required to “take reasonable steps to provide meaningful medical access to each individual with limited English proficiency (LEP) who is eligible to be served or likely to be encountered within the entities’ health programs and activities.”

Why is language support necessary?

Robust interpretation and translation services allow patients to communicate fully with healthcare providers before, during and after treatment. This is far more than a mere convenience to them – language misunderstandings can have tragic results in a medical context. The Huffington Post shared a few such horror stories:

• A 9-year-old girl died as a result of her doctor failing to explain her medication’s dangerous side-effects to her Vietnamese-speaking parents.
• Because doctors didn’t understand a Russian-speaking 78-year-old stroke victim’s complaints of pain and numbness, her leg had to eventually be amputated.
• A 7-year-old boy suffered organ damage when his doctor couldn’t communicate well enough with his Spanish-speaking father and grandparents over the course of several appointments.

The current landscape for people with LEP

At first glance, the statistics seem to show a trend of compliance with Section 1557’s language assistance requirements. According to a study published in Health Affairs, in which over 4,500 U.S. hospitals were surveyed, the majority are offering non-English support:

• 65% of hospitals located in areas of low need for language services provided them.
• 77% of hospitals located in areas of moderate need for language services provided them.
• 75% of hospitals located in areas of high need for language services provided them. These facilities are primarily in the West and Southwest of the country.

However, a closer look at the research shows something much more alarming: Federally funded hospitals account for less than 20% of this data – regardless of where they are located.

Three types of hospitals

The data above measures medical translation and interpretation services offered by three types of hospitals: federally funded hospitals, private non-profit hospitals, and private for-profit hospitals. The federally funded hospitals are the only ones required by law to provide language services for those with limited English proficiency. Yet, it’s the private non-profit hospitals that are actually providing most of the language services measured across the country.

As you can see, 81% of federally funded hospitals in the areas of highest need do not offer language services. This is in direct violation of Section 1557’s requirement to “take reasonable steps to provide meaningful medical access to people with limited English proficiency.” And while the danger of this status quo is known, the future of Section 1557 is not.

Looking forward

As part of the politically charged ACA, the future of Section 1557 is unclear. While politicians have signaled opposition to its gender-related protections, nothing has been said about Section 1557’s support for people with limited English proficiency. However, its benefits are clear:

• Human rights – Providing language services helps hospitals to meet the basic human right for meaningful access to medical care.
• Saving money – Medical facilities are coming to understand that reducing language-related errors can actually save them money in the long-term. Carey Sanders of the California Pan-Ethnic Health Network tells Huffington Post, “The language services are going to keep people healthier and that will end up saving health care dollars down the road. It’s a small investment for a big return.”
• Patient satisfaction – Research has clearly demonstrated that providing language services increases a hospital’s patient satisfaction percentages. Under the ACA, these can lead to improved patient-experience reports in HCAHPS surveys, resulting in increased ACA incentive payments.

Making a plan

Devising a solution requires a hospital to undertake a thoughtful examination of the local populations it serves. According to the ACS, Spanish is the most widely spoken Non-English language in U.S. homes, but it is likely that services may also be needed for other languages, including other Indo-European, Asian and Pacific tongues.

Finding expert medical interpreters can, of course, be a daunting challenge. Fortunately, a full-service LSP such as Morningside can provide the requisite range of qualified interpreters and translators to help ensure a hospital’s delivery of effective and safe health care to its entire community.

If you want to successfully advertise or sell your brand in a foreign market, it helps to communicate with that new audience in their own language. However, speaking their language is not limited to verbal or written cues. It also includes taking into account cultural sensitivities and proclivities like colors, imagery, geographic references and more.

A professional translation company can help you cater your business content to make sure that you connect with as many customers as possible worldwide. Here’s how:

1.  Marketing Material

Professional translations and localization of your advertising collateral, taglines, product packaging and multimedia presentations will help to promote your products and services worldwide while ensuring that what you mean to say is what is actually communicated to each distinct audience.

2.  Website Translation

Allowing your customers to do business in the language they prefer is a proven way to increase interest in your products and services.

3.  Desktop Publishing

Make every audience feel like the content they’re looking at was created just for them by formatting the different language versions of your website and marketing collateral to look graphically consistent across all applications.

4.  Technical Documents

Ready your products for global consumption by translating product information, software manuals, operating manuals, contracts, and export and import documentation into the languages of the end users.

5.  Legal Documents

Manage legal risk by obtaining 100% accurate translations of patents, court filings, discovery documents, litigation files, merger and acquisition records, and antitrust matters.

6.  Financial Information

Attract new investors by providing product information, financial statements, investor relations communications, annual reports and prospectuses in multiple foreign languages.

7.  Interpretation Services

Ensure complete comprehension in legal, corporate, medical and government settings with qualified and vetted interpreters who can do simultaneous, consecutive or whisper interpretation to help you communicate with ease in-person or over-the-phone.

8.  Internal Documents & eLearning

Ensure all your employees, franchisees and third-party vendors fully understand your company’s policies and procedures, employee handbooks,  onboarding materials, interactive eLearning programs, company announcements, and other human resources documents by providing quality translations in the local language of each office.

At Morningside Translations, we offer a full suite of translation services in over 150 languages and dialects. Our global network of 8,000+ translators (including in-country linguists) are experts in dozens of technical fields and subject areas. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you save time and money with your business translation needs.

It would be hard to find two languages more unalike than English and standard Chinese (Mandarin). Verbally, the basic sounds are completely different and the importance of pitch in Chinese has no counterpart in English. In printed documents, English words are composed of individual alphabet letters while Chinese words are represented by unique symbols in a logographic system – symbols which can be printed horizontally or vertically, depending on the location.

Despite these language hurdles, China continues to grow more and more central to global trade. At the basis of any trade deal lies a contract, and these documents are starting to get more time in the limelight. The Supreme People’s Court of China reports that from 2013 to 2015, Chinese courts resolved about 100,000 civil, commercial and maritime lawsuits involving foreign litigants – a 10.4% increase from the previous three-year period.

As the courts themselves have shown, clarity of language in business decisions has become increasingly critical in China. In this reality, having a certified interpreter and/or translator on hand for important Chinese meetings and documents is just smart business.

Advantage or disadvantage?

“He/she who controls the language can control the case,” says lawyer and Asian business expert Dan Harris, writing for China Law Blog. Legal document translations (e.g. contracts and patents) from Chinese-English or English-Chinese can put litigants at a decided advantage or disadvantage – depending on who signed off on the work.

“About 85% of the time the translation is ‘accurate’ but about 99% of the time, it has been translated in a way that favors the side doing the translation,” says Harris. For example, he explains, in some languages the same word can be translated either as ‘shall’ or as ‘should’ – two very different meanings.

Your court or mine?

Harris also makes a very important point about jurisdiction: Litigation against a China-based company outside of China is essentially useless since “most Chinese companies do not have any meaningful assets outside China and because China does not enforce foreign judgments.”

So, if you are an American company doing business in China and something goes wrong, it’s more likely than not that your lawsuit will end up before a Chinese court. If you provide that court with an English contract, the court will use its own translator to translate it into Chinese – which according to Harris means “you are not going to have any influence on what it is going to say nor will you even know what it is going to say until you have sued.”

The bottom line here is that the Chinese version of a business contract is critical to the success of future legal efforts.

The impact of translation mistakes

Translation mistakes can be so wrong  as to be funny — such as when Nike printed the characters for “getting rich” and “fortune arrives” on left and right sneakers, not realizing that together they translate to “getting fat” — or even just plain silly like this can of water, but in a legal context, they’re no joke.

Qu Miao, a well-recognized litigator in Shanghai, told Lexology that in Chinese courts “the interpretation of the claim often becomes the focus of the dispute between both parties and runs through the entire trial.” This is of particular importance for patents filed in China under the Patent Cooperation Treaty (PCT) because disputes may arise over the translations of claims – and even the smallest ambiguity can cause big problems.

By small, we mean something as tiny as the letter “A.” This letter was the point of a 2014 patent infringement dispute that went all the way to the Supreme People’s Court. In Motion Fitness vs. Changzhou Yingcai Metalwork Fitness Equipment, the indefinite article “a” was translated on each instance in the Chinese version of the patent claims to “one” – a specific numerical value. This narrowed the scope of protection in the claims and wound up fatally undermining the plaintiff’s case.

Solid ground

China represents immense business opportunities for a wide variety of industries – the only catch is figuring out how to responsibly scale the gap of language and legal differences. Luckily, a highly experienced business translation service can help you “stand on solid ground,” as the Chinese proverb says. Morningside’s translators can effectively represent clients doing business in China because they are knowledgeable in Chinese law and matched on a case-by-case basis that is determined by their subject matter expertise. If documents need to be defended in a Chinese court, our top-notch interpreters can ensure that foreign-speaking legal teams remain fully informed of every utterance made in a Chinese courtroom. For more information on how we can assist with your Chinese legal translations, contact Morningside today.

Ubiquitous access to the internet presents both opportunities and challenges for manufacturers of consumer-facing pharmaceutical products. On the one hand, the web offers manufacturers an exciting way to stay in touch with users across the globe —  by offering ongoing product support, which if done right, helps build and maintain positive brand awareness. On the other, users have gained a virtual megaphone through which they can broadcast product critiques, and even spread potentially dangerous misinformation to other customers, patients or prospective customers/patients the world over. In both ways, effective product marketing no longer begins and ends with the sale.

The value of a strong web presence

A pharmaceutical company’s website must first and foremost be useful to customers worldwide. A well-designed, carefully and thoroughly translated online help system for each locale — including a localized searchable knowledgebase — can be the backbone of a successful post-sale pharmaceutical marketing strategy. By working with a professional life science translation service to localize online content, pharma companies gain an unprecedented chance to optimally support multiple markets and build brand loyalty in a way that would be difficult or impossible to achieve with live phone operators.

A website also offers a place to build a sense of community that supports the user experience. Pfizer’s Get Old site is an excellent example of courting customers before and after a sale. With great sensitivity to the audience’s interest and feelings — where again, a medical translator’s awareness of local attitudes is critical — the company acquires an opportunity to strategically and discreetly present customers with additional products that may address their needs.

Speed counts

It’s not just the pharma company-pharma user relationship that’s served by a website. These days, it’s quite common for a doctor or medical professional to make a quick visit to a pharma website before or during an appointment with a patient. There, they can pull up the most current product information and email or print it for the patient with the hit of a button. It’s a process that is much simpler than digging through product pamphlets or calling a manufacturer or sales rep to have questions answered.

A recent Forrester survey of U.S. online adults underscores the importance of quick access to information for users and prospective customers, in addition to medical professionals. 73% of respondents say that “valuing their time is the most important thing a company can do.” No one wants to waste time navigating through phone menus if they don’t have to.

Live chat support

While there’s likely to be a need for some level of phone support for the foreseeable future to handle a small number of unusual questions, those calls are fairly rare. For most products, localized chat support can provide a welcome alternative to phone representatives. It’s available 24/7, which removes the complication of time zones and specified support hours – and that is huge for pharmaceutical marketing strategy since, according to Forrester, 53% of potential customers will abandon a possible purchase if they can’t get the information they want immediately.

The popularity of chat as a means of communication is inarguable in any event, and the utilization of chat services for product support is growing at an estimated rate of 24% each year, says the International Customer Management Institute (ICMI). In fact, as Econsultancy has found, chat interaction results in a 73% customer satisfaction rating, as opposed to 44% for phone interaction and 61% for email response systems.

User forums

A website can also serve as a portal for local-language user forums. These are essentially multi-user chats where questions users can ask questions and the company provides answers. Near-instantaneous responses aren’t required, which makes it relatively simple to keep the conversations going while utilizing the help of the right translation company. This gives pharma companies the opportunity to address and manage any issues before they escalate – and create a sense of a personal relationship with each forum member.

Staying social

Equally important in a long-term pharmaceutical marketing plan is the need to establish and maintain an active presence on social media in each market. Facebook and Twitter are good places to start, but there are many other country-specific platforms you can use to target regionally specific customers in their own language. In China, for example, the most popular messaging app is called WeChat and it’s used by half a billion people.

A strong social media marketing presence also requires you to keep an eye on hashtags across platforms that may signify an ongoing conversation involving a company product. Partnering with a knowledgeable language services provider can be invaluable here, since nuance is everything in online discussions, and these exchanges are often based on shared cultural understandings.

Being social is ultimately a great chance to proactively engage customers and to resolve product issues before they harden into fixed “common knowledge” that damages the prospects for a product or the reputation of a company.

The longer, better endgame

Before the advent of the internet, once a product was sold, its marketing cycle was over. That’s no longer true, and while this does require a more extended strategy and prolonged attention to a product throughout its markets — and yes, more work — it also provides endless possibilities for ensuring a positive experience for customers and for establishing long-term loyalty from them. And this isn’t just a nice thing to do, either: It’s predicted that by 2020, user experience will overtake product features and price as the single most important brand differentiator. Maintaining the health of a pharmaceutical brand may depend on embracing the internet’s potential to patiently, strategically, grow your customer family.

Financial institutions take their partnerships with language services providers (LSPs) very seriously. They have to. For banks, brokerages, insurance companies, or trust companies, there is no room for errors. Turnaround times in the industry are short, transactions are often international, and accuracy is always absolutely vital – all of which require top translation companies to have a deep understanding of industry expectations, terminology and concepts.

As part of one of the largest industries worldwide, financial institutions have seen a growing need for translation services over the past decade. Between 2010 and 2011 alone, according to Common Sense Advisory, financial institutions increased their average annual translation spend by 26%. And notably, while cost is always a consideration when conducting business, in financial services it takes a back seat to other, even more pressing, requirements.

Security before everything

A 2012 report from Common Sense reveals that the single most important thing a financial institution scrutinizes when considering a translation agency is its ability to provide iron-clad security for its data. This means bullet-proof protection against online threats, including data theft and hacking. It also means that the translation service must be able to safeguard their data against natural disasters and man-made calamities. These expectations extend to any contractors or third parties working with the LSP because security must be completely air-tight at every stage of the workflow.

Accuracy has two meanings in finance

“Buyers consistently report that quality matters more to them than factors such as price,” reports Common Sense Advisory. In the context of finance, quality translations are accurate translations – and accuracy has two meanings:

• On one hand, it’s about the actual content in the source document – To translate financial content accurately, a translation company must employ linguists who are experts in finance, financial products and the financial industry style – which means being comfortable with the requisite legalese. (Note: Evidence shows that financial institutions often invest their own time to further train translators in the particulars of their own business language. It’s not uncommon for relationships to form with individual translators upon whom institutions come to rely.)

• On the other hand, it’s about the comprehension of the target audience –Financial institutions need to effectively communicate with a wide range of customers and potential customers of varying socioeconomic classes, levels of education, and familiarity with financial products and services. For international marketing materials, the goal is to make a connection with, and appeal to, customers in another culture — and this depends on the translator’s grasp of what will resonate with those people. Of course, translated materials must also comply 100% with all relevant local and regional regulations.

Interpretation is needed as much as translation

The financial industry’s dependence on language services extends beyond document translation. Live, real-time interpretation is every bit as important in an industry in which so much business is conducted face-to-face, on the phone, and in video conferences. Effective customer service — over the phone, or during loan interviews — often requires robust multilingual support as well.

Interpreters must be just as qualified as translators, being in total command of the languages spoken and equally fluent in finance. This safeguards the parties from costly, even disruptive miscommunications, especially during sensitive negotiations. In addition to linguistic mastery, an interpreter must have the deep cultural knowledge that allows the faithful rendering of each spoken nuance.

Challenges exist to be met

In today’s globalized economy, every financial institution – regardless of its size – needs to communicate effectively with speakers of other languages, locally and across the world. Finding the right language service provider to assist with that is a big decision. At Morningside Translations, we guarantee iron-clad security and reliable accuracy with an expansive worldwide network of expert linguists versed both in the intricacies of finance and in the local cultures they serve.

Last month, the newest HTML standard from the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) officially turned three years old. However, in a trend similar to most programming languages or front-end frameworks, HTML5 is only now starting to get the global use it deserves.

Its release three years ago sparked the usual curiosity from UX designers and web programmers, but now the development community is not the only audience excited about HTML5’s capabilities. Business analysts, small business owners, localization engineers, social media marketers, and search engine optimizers are all admitting that their companies are making great strides to become HTML5 compliant.

The release of this new “Living Standard,” as many are calling, has made content localization incredibly easy and immensely flexible for both creators and consumers on the web.

Keep it simple

The most brilliant aspect of this move by W3C is its simplicity – technical updates are brief, intuitive and powerful. Sites that leverage HTML5 are now free from worrying over the differences between devices, browsers and the content the site itself owns. For the first time in web history, HTML markup itself can handle a shift between mobile and desktop without the aid of a larger styling framework like Bootstrap to handle the legwork.

Beyond that, HTML5 introduced a rich and robust API for natively hosting playback for video, audio content and vector-graphic animation in a site’s static code. By now, it’s not exactly news that HTML5 was the final nail in Flash’s coffin. The technical benefits, however, are just the tip of the iceberg.

New elements

Most aspects of the new standard that appeal to global content creators are primarily simple additions to the markup language’s element and attribute library. HTML5 offers new tags that allow for a logical organization of content based on type. For example, an entire block of elements dedicated to blogs and articles was given support.

Content creators now have a slew of native HTML elements to choose from to organize posts or informative pages within their domain. The gist of the elements <article/>, <section/>, <header/> and <footer/> is still simply a method of storing plain text in a document, but with better out-of-the-box styling and the ability to localize more effectively as compared to <span/> and <p/>. A developer may work with their business team to build requirements around placing all translatable content in <article/> elements, for instance. Other examples of elements that display HTML5’s modularity are <summary/>, <section/> and <description/>, whose purposes are fairly self-explanatory.

Attributes

The only ironic part about adding new element sets to allow for content encapsulation is that a smaller component of the markup – attributes – is proving to be more powerful for people worrying about localization. Attributes now allow for any element that houses text to be tagged to identify:

• the source language of the text
• whether or not it contains a term that should be translated
• the intended directionality of the text.

While new modular element sets may help with organization, attributes such as these allow for both increased developer freedom and seamless localization capabilities.

Translation just got a whole lot easier

The concept of if a particular text block should be translated is huge; now the parsing engines of translation services can get by with filtering markup on one of two attributes: translate and its-term. The former’s purpose is to indicate if a medium-to-large body of text requires translation, and the latter is for indicating terminology definitions within a body of text.

The lang attribute is another simple addition that allows for indicating which source language is contained in an element. Pairing lang with the dir attribute has the potential to leave zero gaps in requirements when a content creator approaches a vendor for localization. The dir attribute, standing for “directionality,” explains whether the source language is right-to-left or vice versa.

A perhaps less obviously named, but just as powerful feature that appeared with HTML5 is the ruby annotation. The elements that the ruby annotation is comprised of allow for specifying the pronunciation of the text the annotation encapsulates. While this is applicable to all languages, it marks the first time that Asian languages have the web support for full coverage of their metadata. Gone are the days of “difficult languages” when performing localization and desktop publishing on web content.

A tool of revolution

HTML5 is the small and clairvoyant technical change that allowed for a huge step in the right direction in terms of globalizing web content. Beyond being a sturdy addition to a crucial software construct, it has already acted as a tool of revolution in the way companies think of their presence on the Web. Hopefully, over the next three years we will see the frameworks that are leveraging its sleek and lucid API make it easier for brilliant business minds to reach a wider audience with more accurate localization capabilities.

In the pharmaceutical industry, precision is critical to success. Bad press from a recall of improperly made medical products can cause reputational damage that lasts for years. This is where Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) come into play as an essential part of quality control.

An SOP is a set of step-by-step written instructions that document a work routine or repetitive activity performed by employees at a specific facility or organization. In pharmaceutical manufacturing, the main purpose of an SOP is to provide the necessary information for manufacturing employees to perform their jobs properly and consistently so that the end-product is the same every time. For example, an SOP may describe the process for using, calibrating and maintaining equipment that produces insulin for pediatric diabetes.

When a pharmaceutical company makes the decision to outsource manufacturing to a foreign country, SOPs must be translated and localized for foreign workers at the new manufacturing sites. The translated documents must keep the integrity, accuracy and regulatory compliance of these documents intact – which can be a significant challenge. The best strategy for tackling this challenge is to use a pharmaceutical translation service that employs translators who have subject matter expertise in the pharmaceutical industry. This strategy gives pharma companies three important benefits.

1. Ensuring that the original SOP is clear & complete

A translator’s examination of the original SOP document offers an opportunity to fix any clarity issues that it may contain. It is not uncommon for a translator to expose issues or errors that must be corrected in the original. Some examples include:

• Multiple interpretations – Though the document has likely already been vetted, and may even be the product of delicate negotiations, there still may be passages that are open to multiple interpretations. Such issues quickly become apparent to a translator looking to unambiguously convert meaning into another language.

• Missing steps – Otherwise unnoticed omissions in the instructions may become obvious to translators as they review the procedural steps. Such omissions can include minor interstitial actions that the original writer skipped by mistake, small details that change between steps, or perhaps an important action that hasn’t been clearly explained.

• Slang or jargon – The document may contain phrases that are colloquial or employ metaphors that only native readers will understand. Anne Catesby Jones, writing for Translation Journal, cites an example of an instruction to “place a gasket face up.” She points out, “For something to be face up, it should have a face. Does a gasket have a face? The outcome of that inquiry was to eliminate the phrase ‘face up’ and describe how the gasket would fit in to where it should be placed.” Another relevant example Jones mentions is that in English, “check for leaks” does not just mean to check and then move on. It includes the understanding that if any are found, they must be fixed. Subtleties like this are often difficult for a native speaker to spot, but are obvious to a qualified translator.

Note: Changes made to the original SOP should be documented within the SOP’s history section to ensure regulatory compliance.

2. Explaining processes correctly

When translating SOPs, a simple rule must be constantly applied: The SOP must describe processes exactly as they will appear to the operator. If a hardware knob or button is labeled in the native language – or any other language – it must also be referred to in that language in the translated document (right down to the capitalization). Likewise, the electronic text that appears on displays may – or may not – be shown in the language spoken at the production site. Whatever language the operator will see onscreen – regardless of their spoken language – must be identical to what is described in the translated SOP. The purpose here is twofold: it helps to ensure accuracy and reinforces confidence that the translated SOP instructions provided by the pharmaceutical company do, in fact, work.

3. Dealing with terminology

Terminology is an especially tricky area in pharma. Here is how a professional translation service can help:

• Consistency – Most terminology should be translated. However,certain terms are international and should be left in the original language. Knowing which terms to use – and applying them consistently – is critical to avoid confusion for the manufacturer that is utilizing your SOP. Even if words are used inconsistently in the original, the translated document can avoid this pitfall if it is produced by a professional medical translator.

• Regulatory knowledge – A certain amount of pharma terminology will inevitably be dependent on regulatory requirements. It is incumbent on a translator performing regulatory translation to have up-to-date knowledge of the applicable local and international pharma standards, and to make sure that the translated SOPs comply.

• Local brand sensitivity – In the original document, some objects may be identified by commonly understood, trademarked names, such as “Kleenex,” regardless of the actual brand of tissue being used. It’s important to be sensitive to trademarked names that may or may not be internationally recognized. When there are locally recognized trademark names, a certified translator can employ them to better reflect local language usage.

• Abbreviations – Abbreviations are an area in which the knowledge of a qualified medical translator is critical. Some abbreviations are required for local or international regulatory compliance, some exist only in the original language, and some have local equivalents. Abbreviation usage should be decided on a case-by-case basis by a professional translator who can determine what makes the most sense to the target audience.

SOP Translation Expertise

The rendering of high-quality, accurate, and useful SOP document translation services in pharma manufacturing requires a tremendous amount of knowledge and skill, as well as a native-level understanding of each target language. Using a professional LSP will give you access to a worldwide staff of translators who are experts in pharma manufacturing and have a deep understanding of the various cultures where your translated SOPs will be used.

Cross-border business arrangements and international litigation are becoming much more prevalent in our increasingly globalized world. So can translation technology really help law firms save time and improve their service?  Legal translations of the countless number of documents required for international legal proceedings can sometimes be downright overwhelming. Multiply that by the number of countries involved, and it becomes clear why law firms struggle with the gargantuan task of taking on international cases: Getting them done on time, without the exorbitant cost, and executed with the error-free accuracy that the law and regulatory agencies demand – is difficult.

Fortunately, translation technology from a professional language service provider (LSP) can provide an efficient and affordable solution to help lawyers and their teams devise a cost-effective and time-saving translation strategy. Here are the three key types of translation technology you must know about.

1. Machine translation

Machine translation (MT) is an automated, software-based translation process best suited to situations in which there’s a need to quickly translate a large number of documents. MT translations are ideal for:

• litigation documents
• reference documents
• discovery and eDiscovery materials
• culling unnecessary documents from a large set
• identifying important documents in a large set that will need further review.

MT is a word-by-word, literal translation process unaware of context or grammatical nuance. It can be a great help in reducing mountains of paperwork into molehills so that law firms can confidently identify which ones need a greater degree of precision. Then, if budgetary constraints allow, MT can be paired with human post-editing to eliminate all errors or potential unclarities in the translated text.

To make MT optimally accurate, some translation companies can provide custom translation technology for MT software engines built around a firm’s specific needs or field of law, which can be integrated with relevant localization projects.

2. Translation memory

There are a number of standardized phrases or paragraphs that appear frequently in legal text. If a firm specializes in a particular area, this is especially likely to occur. For such content, translation memory (TM) offers a powerful tool for speeding up the translation process since it eliminates the need to re-translate the same content over and over again. TM is a software-driven, expandable database of often-encountered wordings and their translations in the desired target languages.

TM scans a document to identify repeat phrases and presents each match — along with its translation — to a human legal translator for review, saving time, money, and, not insignificantly, promoting consistency throughout the final work. As cases proceed and more phrases are added to a client’s TM, the time required for the translation of documents is continuously reduced as more standardized wording is recognized.

3. Terminology management

It’s often the case that law firms will have their own lexicon of terminologies, abbreviations, and brands. To ensure consistent use throughout all translations, a software glossary can aggregate these terms along with their preferred translations. Such a glossary preserves the preferred way of communicating across all translated documents. At Morningside, we can import a firm’s existing glossary, or build a new one that fully represents your way of communicating.

Glossaries can also be integrated with TM databases.

With an LSP relationship in place

As the practice of law becomes ever more multilingual and cross-cultural — even within a single country — technologies such as MT, TM, and glossaries can transform what might otherwise be a laborious, time-consuming, and expensive headache into a streamlined, worry-free process.

Morningside is proud to be featured in Slator, the leading translation industry website, where our new owner-operators and co-CEOs Tom Klein and Roland Lessard discuss why they entered the language services industry, why they chose Morningside, and their future plans for the company.

Enter the Operators: Morningside’s New Owners Bet Big On Language Services

by Florian Faes on October 11, 2017

 

In late May 2016, one of the larger language service providers (LSPs) in the United States changed hands. Morningside Translations, a New York-headquartered LSP that focuses on IP, patent, legal, and other regulated industries, was acquired by a group of individuals led by now co-CEOs Tom Klein and Roland Lessard.

The Engineer and the Banker

Mergers and acquisitions have been red-hot in the language services industry for the past two to three years with new deals announced weekly. But what makes this transaction different from many recent deals is that Klein and Lessard are from outside the language industry. They have taken over Morningside as operators, and not as purely financial investors.

The two have divided up their responsibilities. Lessard, a Connecticut native with a background in engineering, manages operations and related areas. Klein, who started his career at Goldman Sachs’ investment bank, has a more sales-focused, client-facing role.

Lessard and Klein met nearly a decade ago when they were both working at the background check company Sterling Talent Solutions. “Roland and I both served on the executive committee at Sterling,” Klein says. In 2009, “the company was around the same size as Morningside is today, and we grew it to USD 400m before we left,” Lessard adds.

Some of that growth came from acquisitions. Klein ran Sterling’s corporate development function for three years and says the company acquired about seven companies during his tenure.

In the middle of 2015, Sterling was bought by Principal Investment Area, Goldman Sachs’ private equity arm. Klein says the sale was a “logical time to leave” and move on and try new adventures.

Talking to over 50 LSPs

So what drew them to language services and why Morningside? Klein says, “I have to give credit to my partner, Roland, who found the language services space.”

The two partners saw that the language industry offered strong fundamentals. As Lessard explains, “We felt very strongly about the macro tailwinds driving the growth of the space — everything from the explosion of digital content to mobile internet adoption to the globalization of the world, and then where translation services is in the product life cycle.”

“We felt very strongly about the macro tailwinds driving the growth of the space” ― Roland Lessard, co-CEO, Morningside Translations

After deciding on language services as their target industry, what followed was an exhaustive process to identify and vet a suitable company to acquire.

“We spent the next year meeting with owners and ended up talking to over 50 LSPs and a couple of dozen industry experts, really diving in headfirst. That was a very significant effort to really try to get up to speed and get smart and decide how and where to play in language services,” recounts Klein.

Competition for LSPs with a certain scale has become intense over the past two years, with both strategic buyers and private equity firms alike competing for companies in the USD 20m to USD 40m range.

While the co-CEOs did not disclose whether the Morningside process was competitive, Klein shares that they liked the company for its industry vertical mix and growth track record. According to Klein, Morningside’s compounded annual growth rate has been close to 30% annually over the past five years.

“We ended up talking to over 50 LSPs” ― Tom Klein, co-CEO, Morningside Translations

Morningside has traditionally been strong in industries such as intellectual property, patents, and legal, where demand is often determined by regulatory requirements. Klein says they are also building out their life sciences business and do a significant volume of work in e-learning.

Exposure to regulatory industries has been sought after in recent years as demand from large enterprise IT accounts faltered with Lionbridge acquiring CLS Communication as early as 2014. Welocalize, RWS, and others are also looking for growth in those markets.

Klein is confident that growth in areas such as legal (e.g. cross-border litigation, international arbitration) or the life sciences (e.g. medical devices) is set to continue.

Geographically, Morningside is centered in the United States and has sizeable operations in Germany and Israel. When asked about Morningside’s top five target languages, Lessard lists Japanese, French, Chinese simplified, Spanish, and German.

Competition in regulatory verticals is fierce. According to Klein, Morningside’s top three competitors are Welocalize-owned ParkIP, Utah-based Multiling, and the language industry’s new juggernaut RWS, whose share price marks a new high almost daily.

No One-Trick Pony

In terms of translation management and productivity tools, Morningside chose to buy instead of building and deploying a combination of Plunet as TMS and memoQ for translation productivity.

But like so many other LSPs Lessard says they are open to using other tools if a client requires it. “I think being a one-trick pony when it comes to an MT or TM offering is a big mistake. We feel that you have to have the ability to connect to many,” he says.

Morningside sources from both individual freelance translators and single-language vendors.

A Long Game

Do the rapid progress in machine translation and related language technologies worry the two co-CEOs? Do they see machine translation as a threat, in particular in a vertical like patents and IP, where there are troves of well-structured reference corpora which neural MT models can feed on?

While Klein acknowledges that certain technical content in IP may be vulnerable to competition from pure MT, he stresses there are many areas that will continue to require human expert translators in the foreseeable future. “There are many elements in IP that are extremely challenging and where word ordering and syntax is unbelievably important,” he says.

How does the CEO duo plan to develop the company going forward? Lessard says their growth strategy is based on four pillars: pursuing organic growth; introducing new products and services into existing segments; seeking channel partnerships in areas such as e-discovery, forensics, or litigation support; and, doing acquisitions. On acquisitions, Klein says “the way we capitalized the business [we have] plenty of ability to do bolt-on acquisitions when desirable.”

“There are many elements in IP where word ordering and syntax is unbelievably important”

Unlike a financial investor who typically has a four- to six-year exit horizon, the two co-CEOs, both in their late 30s, are not planning to flip the company any time soon. “This is definitely a long game,” Lessard says.

Perhaps making a dig at crosstown rival TransPerfect, Klein adds that he and Lessard “have a lot of faith in each other, and we trust each other. The co-CEO model doesn’t work everywhere.”

To grow the business, the two operators have their work cut out for them. With no significant proprietary technology, they will have to make smart acquisitions and invest in their sales force to gain market share in their core verticals.

They will also have to increase the company’s international presence and plant more flags on the map if they want a seat at the table in large RFPs issued by big global buyers. This will require a significant investment in technology and in people and take up precious management time.

The competition will be watched closely.

https://slator.com/ma-and-funding/enter-operators-morningsides-new-owners-bet-big-language-services/