Case Study: ABC PHARMACEUTICAL Canada*

The Challenge—

ABC Pharmaceutical Canada needed multiple documents—including slide kits, product monographs, and newsletters—translated and typeset for the upcoming National Sales Meeting. Slide kits were over 50 slides long; product monographs were lengthy; and newsletters were 6 to 8 pages each. Materials had been assembled in several different formats: Power Point, Word and QuarkXPress. The entire project had to be ready to print—translated and formatted identically to the English version—within 30 days.

The Solution—

Nothing is more important than accuracy and speed when it comes to pharmaceutical translation. Clinical reports, product inserts and marketing materials must be rendered with absolute precision. Maintaining accuracy while turning the work around quickly was the key to preparing ABC Pharmaceutical for their National Sales Meeting.

To meet ABC's goals of accuracy, consistency and speed, we used translation memory—a type of software that stores and reuses terms and phrases as content goes through revisions and updates—to detect all repeated or previously translated segments in the text. Because parts of the documents were repeated from one to the next, we were able to recover about 40% of the text from work that had already been translated. We were also able to verify that every term, phrase, and sentence was consistent with ABC Pharmaceutical's standard usage and style.

The translation memory tool also gave us the ability to separate the text from the formatting instructions in the various files. After it was translated, the text could be placed back into the page layout template where it automatically acquired all the formatting associated with the original, including pagination, bullets, fonts, and graphics.

The Proof—

We delivered the necessary marketing materials to ABC's eager sales representatives before their deadline. Our cutting-edge technology, in conjunction with highly trained, experienced translators, allowed us to leverage ABC Pharmaceutical's translation assets and eliminate unnecessary duplication of effort. We did in days what used to take weeks. And ABC Pharmaceutical Canada continues to look to LWT Communications for translation solutions.

*Confidentiality is an important part of our business, so we do not publish client names in public arenas. The elements of this case study are real, but the client's name is not. If you would like more information on the scope of our experience and expertise, please do not hesitate to contact us.