Q8. Why should I not give my document to a freelance medical translator?

Good question! The chances are that the translation you get back will not differ significantly, if at all, from the agency product, and that it will cost between one half to a third less. If the volume of your work is not great, and you’re happy with the result, you’ll find it an advantage, in terms of product consistency, always to deal with the same provider. Even if your ‘own’ translator is overloaded or on vacation, he or she, if good, should always be able to pass you on to a colleague working at a similar level.

As translation agencies are well aware, freelance translators are easy to find. In the UK they are grouped into the Medical and Pharmaceutical Network of the Institute of Translation & Interpreting. The majority of the 120+ members are linguists who have specialized in biomedicine, some have a bioscience degree, and 3-4 have a bioscience PhD or a qualification in medicine or pharmacy. Of the latter, however, none to our knowledge combine their specialist qualification with a foreign university degree taken in the language from which they translate.

Our only other reservation is that, as with translation agencies themselves, membership of such networks is unregulated. The only qualification required is the payment of a very small annual fee (£15, in the case of the British Network). The Network itself offers the disclaimer ‘inclusion on this site does not in any way constitute a recommendation’. Except in the case of a handful of outstanding members, you are unlikely to receive an authoritative, copy-ready product suitable, for example, for publication either under your company's imprint or in a journal.

On the other hand, the quality may be perfectly adequate for the translation of an annex to a clinical trial report, one of the truckload of volumes making up a registration dossier, whose sad destiny in all too many cases is to remain unread. An unforgettable comment, made to us on his retirement by the translation director of a European pharmaceutical company, was that not one submission to the FDA had ever run into trouble on the grounds of its English - and he'd seen some ‘translations’ in his time.