EU languages in medical translation

If, like me, you’re a medical translator who has two European languages as your working pair, you’ll no doubt be familiar with the constant stream of work that comes from the EU pharma regulatory field. In fact, right now you’re probably snowed under, because there is a pressing deadline. By law*, Marketing Authorisation Holders have until 2 July 2012 to submit electronic information on all their medicinal products for human use authorised in the European Union. According to 2011 figures, we’re talking about a total of 263,444 medicinal products authorised in the different Member States. Read more…

Posted in Medical, Regulatory | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

How to get rid of a tag soup in Trados Studio.

If you read CAT tool forums at ProZ, Translators Café, Yahoo Groups and elsewhere, you will have noticed that questions about rogue or junk tags come up most weeks. Of course, if you’ve just opened a file in Studio and are faced with a plague of tags in each segment – even interspersed between characters – you may not have the patience to take a deep breath and search for the answer. A new desperate plea for help is sent out. Read more…

Posted in 1. The Basics, Trados Studio | Tagged , , , | 30 Comments

ADRs: a new EMA website and a terminology review

Adverse Drug Reaction reporting

Clindamycin rash

EMA, the European Medicines Agency, has recently launched a new website giving public access to the European database of suspected adverse drug reaction (ADR) reports. The website provides an A-Z list of reports that have been submitted to EudraVigilance by national medicines regulatory authorities. The list is classified by product and substance.

For medical translators the new website offers a good opportunity to brush up on terms and definitions used in ADR reporting, so the rest of this post is a brief review of ADR terminology in the form of a Q&A section.  Read more…

Posted in Medical, Regulatory, Terminology | Tagged , , , | 7 Comments

A translator’s guide to the EMA templates

Last week an agency asked me if I would write some instructions for their medical translators about using EMA-QRD templates in their work. I thought I would share my ideas with you. Read more…

Posted in Medical, Regulatory, Terminology | Tagged , , , , , , , | 29 Comments

By way of introduction

Welcome to my new blog!

After reading lots about “Why you should be blogging” and “Why you shouldn’t be blogging” I’ve finally decided to take the plunge. Karen Tkaczyk very nearly succeeded in putting me off a couple of weeks ago with her excellent guest post on The case against blogging.  Read more…

Posted in Uncategorized | 1 Comment