Interesting news this week, the FDA (US Food and Drug Administration) issued a warning letter to a Chinese pharma company “for failing to translate a drug properly”. This delivers a stark reminder of the ‘often’ critical role translation has in the business processes.

A Chinese company had mislabelled an over-the-counter drug exported to the United States as containing the ingredient hydrocortisone instead of dexamethasone, blaming the error on a mistranslation (the drug has been recalled).

This important episode highlights that errors in translation can sometimes have life-or-death consequences for businesses. It underscores why many providers in the language industry continue to succeed by delivering to clients that extra level of trust in high-quality output.

With people’s lives at stake, life sciences is one of the number of industries demanding the most exacting standards and processes from language service providers.

TW Languages, a multilingual translation company is very much aware of the importance of producing accurate translations. We know that quality is not only down to the team producing the translation but also the systems and processes.

This is one of the benefits of having ISO 17100:2015 ‘Translation Services’ certification. The first standard that is unique to the global translation industry.

This standard provides specific requirements for the translation process which affects the quality and delivery of translation services including the management of resources. There are also strict guidelines for translator selection plus competences and the development of Translation Project Managers (TPMs). It is not always known that the TPMs have the final responsibility in ensuring the quality of the translation.

The overall benefit of ‘certification’ is that the client can have trust in the translation process and the quality produced.

TW Languages achieved certification in 2016 and have since had a successful 1st year audit.
*Credit to: Slator.com