The Word Desk Founder, Dr Helen Williams, was delighted to join Jason Willis-Lee on Turn Yourself into a Booked out Freelance Translator, to talk about linguistic validation, a translation process used in the life sciences industry to ensure that a clinical outcomes assessment (in other words, a survey or questionnaire) used to gather information from patients about their condition, treatment, and quality of life, is linguistically accurate, culturally appropriate, and conceptually equivalent across territories.
In this half an hour podcast, Helen and Jason talk about the aims of linguistic validation, the methods, the stakeholders and how translators can get involved in these complex but fascinating clinical translation projects.
The aim of linguistic validation is to maintain concept equivalence across all target language versions, so it's not as straightforward as an A to B translation from source to target language. For example, how do concepts like "pins and needles", "itching" or "feeling blue" translate into 100 different languages? Clinical research teams need to be able to assess the patient experience in different territories and successful concept equivalence in translation allows data scientists to compare global datasets.
Helen also gives some tips for linguists looking to secure linguistic validation work and lets the audience in on some invaluable business advice she was given ten years ago that still applies and still bears fruit (hint: it's all about the people you surround yourself with!).
If you're curious to find out more, whether you are a linguist or life sciences professional, pour yourself a cup of something soothing and hit play.
