How is this company still in business?

Jocelyn Laney wrote:

After completing the application process, this company denied me because I don't have a bio/medical degree. As you said, why would a doctor or scientist be doing translation instead of focusing on their main job? The number of people who would choose this, and are not already working another company, is very few.

Meanwhile, I have gotten plenty of medical jobs (patient paperwork, research papers, clinical trial documents) from other agencies that are less picky about translator background. I enjoy patient paperwork because the grammar is straightforward and I feel that someone is being helped directly.

Jocelyn Laney wrote:

After completing the application process, this company denied me because I don't have a bio/medical degree. As you said, why would a doctor or scientist be doing translation instead of focusing on their main job? The number of people who would choose this, and are not already working another company, is very few.

Meanwhile, I have gotten plenty of medical jobs (patient paperwork, research papers, clinical trial documents) from other agencies that are less picky about translator background. I enjoy patient paperwork because the grammar is straightforward and I feel that someone is being helped directly.

Kaspars Melkis wrote:

If you put on a black hat, you can say that it is a very good company. They make sure that no personal medical information gets leaked by translators misplacing pdf files or losing their laptops. The special software makes sure that your computer doesn't have any spyware as well. As for the quality, these jobs are not for patient care but for regulators who need to see what side-effects the study drug might potentially have and therefore don't require impeccable style. The most important is that the translator doesn't miss anything even though it is understood that most of included information is not relevant. The regulations are useful as they make sure that all steps of the process are duly performed.

From another perspective, however, ticking all the checkboxes can be superficial and a lack of quality culture can be disastrous even in tightly regulated environment. A good recent example is an Indian pharmaceutical manufacturer who changed the supplier of one of the ingredients for their cough syrup, and many children died due to poisonous impurities in it. It makes me wary of medicines manufactured in India even though the regulators assure that they are produced according to the same strict quality standards. Regulators cannot inspect every facility all the time and if the Indian culture is to tick the checkbox without verifying the actual product, that is not worth much.

Some parts of the regulatory institutions can also be corrupted. When the FDA approved aducanumab for treatment of Alzheimer's disease it was done against the recommendation of the FDA scientific committee. The drug not only has very low effectiveness but it can also cause brain swelling, a serious side effect that arguably in some cases had caused death. The drug trials are often run internationally and in this case precise translation of medical reports are important as mistakes could lead to a missed safety signal.

I have no axe to grind about this company. I worked for it but when they couldn't pay me as much as I wanted, we parted our ways. I am not going to badmouth a translation agency just because they pay less than I wanted. It may be that I am just greedy and overestimate my capabilities. Whatever, I prefer working with texts that are more challenging and require high quality even if such jobs are rarer. It may not be suitable for everyone but I can see where this agency stands, what is the global business environment and why they cannot pay more. The rotten part is elsewhere and they are just trying to make money, just like all of us.

[Edited at 2023-01-07 09:29 GMT]

Justin Trumain wrote:

When people bring up the fact that some companies earn millions or billions, I've always thought that translation could be a perfect field for money laundering.

Fake or subsidiary companies would pay the company .12 to. 30 a word for a project (some random document, it doesn't matter, the translation is not important). Company would either just machine translates or pays someone cheap (just to make things look real).

Example: I want to launder 10,000. XXXXXXTranslations would set up an LLC called "Vandalay Industries". Vandalay Industries would pay XXXXXXTranslations 20,000 for a project. The translation company would "earn" 10,000 in income on the books and pocket the other, now laundered 10,000 paid to it from the fake LLC.

Michael Newton wrote:

When I have answered proz.com ads for medical translators, the agencies are not interested in a medical background. They are looking for the lowest of the low.

Brittany Sanders wrote:



So those agencies would rather pay thousands to lawyers instead of hundreds to translators? If they hire an unqualified translator for a medical translation, and a patient gets hurt, a process server might come knocking on their door faster than they blink. (Especially if they and the patient are in USA--lawsuits are practically a pastime in this country.) Being too cheap can cost you money.