Case Study: Cost-efficient translation thanks to clever data preparation

Clinical studies are an essential part of medical research and development. While the translation of study documents already plays a decisive role during the implementation of the study, the subsequent multilingual documentation and archiving is also of great importance. A long-standing client of the Clinical Studies team commissioned the translation of all correspondence between the study sponsor and the ethics committee following the completion of a study. The project comprised a total of 500 individual documents that were to be translated from German into English.

Our client and mt-g have been working closely together since 2015 - a relationship based on trust that laid the foundation for the efficient and cost-effective implementation of this challenging project.

The request

At the end of October, the Clinical Studies team received a request from a long-standing customer for the translation of around 500 documents from German into English. The delivery date was set for January 15, 2025, with the first partial deliveries to be made as early as mid-December. In total, the project comprised 318,938 words before data preparation - a considerable volume that required efficient planning.

The customer had not only requested a pure translation, but also optimized data preparation and machine translation with subsequent post-editing. The aim was to make the translation process as efficient as possible in order to keep costs within the given budget. By involving the experienced team at an early stage, strategic measures could be developed even during this phase to ensure optimum project management.

The challenge

Successfully implementing the project presented the Clinical Studies team with several challenges. One of the biggest was the large number of individual documents: The 500 files were stored in a complex folder structure specified by the customer, which had to be maintained exactly throughout the entire process. This required precise organization and structured project management.

In addition, the documents were delivered exclusively in PDF format. As direct editing was not possible, they first had to be converted into an editable format (Microsoft Word). The aim was to preserve the original formatting as far as possible to ensure a smooth translation process.

Another key challenge was the high number of content repetitions within the documents. If all files were translated at once without optimization, identical or similar text passages would have been calculated as new words despite the repetitions - a costly approach that would have caused the project to exceed the client's budget. To avoid this, an efficient strategy had to be developed to ensure maximum reuse of previously translated content.

The solution

To ensure a cost-effective and high-quality translation, mt-g relied on an optimized combination of machine translation, post-editing and strategic step-by-step editing of the documents.
The first step was to convert the supplied PDFs into an editable format (Microsoft Word). Despite the high level of automation in this process, a manual check of the data was essential to ensure that all content and formatting was replicated correctly. It was then decided not to translate all 500 documents at once, but to divide them into individual, thematically and linguistically optimized packages.

For this purpose, the documents were carefully analyzed to identify textual similarities regardless of the specified folder structure. Based on this, a "basic package" with around 30 files was created, which was machine translated and post-edited by a specialized translator. The final revised translation was added to the client's translation memory (TM) and served as the basis for the subsequent translation packages.

One package after the other was translated step by step. Each package was post-edited by a medical specialist translator and the reviewed content was added to the translation memory. This iterative process meant that the volume of pre-translated content grew with each step, thus continuously reducing the amount of new words to be translated. This procedure was repeated until all documents had been fully translated.

Thanks to this optimized approach, the original volume of 318,938 words to be translated was reduced to just 36,102 words - a saving that provided the client with considerable cost and time benefits.

Project process simply explained

To illustrate the optimized translation process even more clearly, we have summarized the most important steps in a short video. This shows how a significant reduction in translation volume and costs was achieved through targeted data preparation and a step-by-step approach.

The result

Thanks to the optimized approach, the customer received all 500 documents in the desired target language - sorted exactly according to the specified folder structure and ready for archiving. The targeted reuse of previously translated content not only ensured the consistency of the specialist terminology, but also significantly expanded the client's translation memory. This offers long-term benefits for future projects, as existing translations can be reused.

Another decisive advantage of this approach was the significant cost reduction: Compared to a fully manual approach with all the content being translated as new without a step-by-step approach, translation costs were reduced by around 60% - while maintaining the same high quality. This project impressively demonstrates how strategic planning, intelligent data preparation and the targeted use of machine translation with post-editing can harmonize both efficiency and cost-effectiveness.