With expanding global clinical trials and stricter regulatory requirements, life sciences companies face growing pressure to translate faster without losing accuracy. AI-powered machine translation (MT) offers an efficient solution, capable of handling high-volume content like clinical trial documentation, regulatory submissions, and product labeling. But can it meet the industry’s strict compliance standards?
When combined with human expertise, MT not only boosts speed but also maintains the accuracy and regulatory adherence that highly regulated industries need.
Solving Translation Challenges with AI and MT
Life sciences translation presents several unique challenges that require a thoughtful approach. Let’s explore some key concerns:
1. Dealing with Complex and Specialized Medical Terminology
Highly specialized medical and scientific terms must be accurately conveyed across languages. AI and MT tools trained on medical datasets can translate specialized terms like “pharmacodynamics” consistently, correctly and quickly. This consistency minimizes the risk of errors in critical documents, along with the associated compliance risks.
2. Maintaining Accuracy in Critical Documents
Not only is the terminology complex, but accuracy is essential. Even one small error is one too many in critical documents like clinical trial protocols, patient instructions and regulatory filings. AI-driven quality assurance checks can detect translation errors early, preventing critical mistakes that could affect compliance or patient safety, or cause delays in clinical trials.
3. Navigating Global Regulatory Requirements
Life sciences companies have to meet stringent regulatory requirements from bodies like the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA), and these rules are always changing. For example, with the introduction of the new Medical Device Regulation (MDR) and In Vitro Diagnostic Regulation (IVDR), language requirements for medical device and diagnostics manufacturers in Europe have become more rigorous. AI and MT tools built with local regulations in mind can simplify the process, verifying that every document complies with regional requirements and avoiding costly delays.
4. Handling High Volumes with Tight Deadlines
The volume of content that needs translating—ranging from clinical trials, regulatory filings, pharmacovigilance, labeling, and marketing materials—is enormous. Managing such a high volume while maintaining consistency across languages is a constant challenge. AI and MT provide fast, high-volume translations, with expert post-editing to keep accuracy high while scaling efficiently.
Benefits of AI-Powered Translation
While the complexities of life sciences translation are significant, AI-powered machine translation offers key advantages that help address these challenges:
- Budget Optimization: MT reduces the time and resources needed for high-volume translation projects, such as patient-reported outcomes (PROs), regulatory dossiers for global submissions, and pharmacovigilance reports, helping companies optimize their translation budgets without sacrificing quality.
- Scalability & Speed: MT can handle large volumes of content quickly, allowing companies to manage everything from patient recruitment materials to drug labeling across multiple languages, while meeting global submission deadlines, even under regulatory pressure.
- Faster Time to Market: Because MT speeds things up, it reduces turnaround times for important projects. Whether it’s submitting regulatory documents or rolling out patient recruitment campaigns, this acceleration helps life sciences companies bring their products and research to global markets quicker.
- Automation of Repetitive Tasks: AI-powered tools can handle repetitive work, like updating drug labels or revising clinical protocols, freeing human translators to focus on more complex content like translating scientific studies or patient education materials.
- Consistency in Terminology: When supplied with preapproved translations for commonly used words and phrases in the form of glossaries and translation memories, AI systems maintain consistent translation of these specialized terms across multiple projects—essential for preserving scientific accuracy and meeting regulatory requirements throughout the drug lifecycle.
- Regulatory Compliance: AI-powered translation solutions can be fine-tuned to match regional regulations, helping companies stay on top of varying global requirements. By reducing compliance headaches, these tools make it easier to keep translations accurate and consistent across all markets, avoiding costly delays in approvals.
The challenge remains: how can life sciences companies tap into these benefits while still upholding the strict quality and compliance standards the industry demands?
Improving Translation Accuracy with AI: How to Get Speed and Quality
Implementing AI in highly regulated industries requires careful planning. But with the right processes, companies can tap into MT’s speed and efficiency while still maintaining the level of accuracy required for their work:
- Machine translation with post-editing (MTPE) for a human-in-loop process: After MT does the heavy lifting, trained linguists with a background in life sciences review the translations to catch any errors, refine language, and make sure the final product meets regulatory standards.
- Domain-specific terminology: Using specialized glossaries ensures that technical terms are accurate and consistent, so there’s no confusion across different documents and languages.
- Quality assurance (QA) workflows: A solid QA process—built on multiple rounds of review—helps guarantee that translations are not only accurate but also in line with local regulatory requirements.
- Starting with a pilot program can help life sciences companies fine-tune these processes and see how MT fits into their workflows, all in a controlled, safe environment.
Get Started with an AI Translation Pilot
ULG’s AI Translation Pilot offers a risk-free way to see how machine translation (MT) fits into your workflows. We start by assessing your content and language needs, then customize the MT engine to match your brand’s tone and specialized terminology. After running a test, our team reviews the results and provides tailored recommendations. Whether MT is ready for full integration or needs fine-tuning, you’ll gain clear insights on how it can save time and optimize your budget.
Why Run an AI Translation Pilot?
Going through this process allows you to iron out any wrinkles in the AI translation process before you scale.
That means you can:
- Improve translation accuracy with AI customization: By using your previously translated materials and glossaries, we can adjust the MT engine to match your brand’s tone and voice. By the time you launch a full-scale program, you’ll get consistent and accurate results, even in the most technical content.
- See how MT works for your content firsthand: See how MT handles the complexities of life sciences translation with your content. From pharmacovigilance reports to patient-facing materials, you can assess how well it integrates into your workflow and the quality of the results.
- Get data-driven insights: You’ll get a clear picture of how MT impacts turnaround times, quality, and budget optimization—helping you make informed decisions on how to scale translation processes without compromising on accuracy or compliance.
Running a pilot helps you understand the potential of artificial intelligence in medical translation while keeping everything risk-free. You’ll see firsthand how the technology can help you translate more content faster while you meet the strict demands of the life sciences industry.
Start Automating Translations with AI
With over 20 years of experience offering translation services for highly regulated industries and 10+ AI translation pilots currently running with major life sciences companies, ULG is uniquely positioned to guide you through the process.
Our AI translation pilot program lets you see how AI can fit into your workflows, improving efficiency, consistency, and compliance. We’ll help you determine where AI works best and scale the program when you’re ready, all while maintaining the highest quality standards.
Ready to see the impact of AI on your translation processes? Start an AI Pilot with ULG and gain the insights you need to move forward confidently.
