Medical Translation Service Fees You Want to Know! Explanation of Market Rates and Price Determining Factors

In medical translation, which requires a high level of expertise and quality, you may be wondering about the translation costs. In this blog, we will introduce the factors that influence translation fees and points to consider when choosing a cost-effective medical translation service.

Table of Contents

1. Types of Medical Translation Services
2. Benefits and Points to Note When Using Medical Translation Services
2-1. Benefits of Using Medical Translation Services
2-2. Points to Note When Using Medical Translation Services
3. Factors Determining Medical Translation Fees and Market Rates
3-1. Factors Determining Medical Translation Fees
3-1-1. Translation Volume and Character Count
3-1-2. Time Required for Translation (Man-hours, Process, Delivery Date)
3-1-3. Types and Number of Languages to be Translated
3-2. Market Rates for Medical Translation Services and Cases Where Additional Fees Occur
3-2-1. Market Rates for Medical Translation Services
3-2-2. Cases to Watch Out for Where Additional Fees Occur
4. Points for Choosing Medical Translation Services with Appropriate Cost-Effectiveness
4-1. Companies with High Expertise and Quality
4-2. Companies Capable of Efficient Translation Using Technology
4-3. Companies That Can Provide Solutions Beyond Translation
4-4. Companies with Robust Information Security
4-5. A Company You Can Consult About Cost Performance
5. Introduction to Human Science's Medical Translation Services

1. Types of Medical Translation Services

Before discussing the pricing of our medical translation services, let me introduce the types of materials that can be translated.

●Translation of Medical and Academic Papers and Materials
Medical papers, medical books, medical-related publications, conference materials, etc.
The field of medicine covers a wide range of areas such as oncology, metabolism, and internal medicine. When creating, reading, and translating documents, it is necessary to be thoroughly familiar with the subdivided medical fields, the structure of papers, and unique expressions.

●Translation Related to Pharmaceuticals
Documents such as clinical trial-related materials and safety reports to regulatory authorities created by pharmaceutical companies
Since the content mainly involves pharmacology, it is necessary to understand advanced content and describe it accurately, and the text must follow the unique formats, styles, and expressions appropriate for documents such as clinical trial-related documents and safety reports.

●Translation Related to Medical Devices
In addition to documents created for development, manufacturing, and approval, various manuals such as user guides and catalogs
Medical devices require a high level of expertise similar to medical and pharmaceutical documents, and depending on the type of device, knowledge of computers, machinery, engineering, and physics is often required.

●Bio-related Translation
Documents, catalogs, and web content related to cell analysis, gene analysis, etc.
This is a field with increasing demand in recent years, dealing with intricate and complex mechanisms at invisible levels such as molecules, genomes, and proteins, requiring advanced knowledge and comprehension skills for document creation, reading, and translation.

As you can see, medical translations often require a high level of expertise, which tends to result in higher costs.
We also introduce the types of medical translation services in the blog below, so please take a look.

What is Medical and Pharmaceutical Translation? Reasons Why Translation is Difficult and Points for Selecting a Service Provider

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Five Challenges and Solutions in Medical Translation

Introducing common challenges faced by many companies in medical translation and specific solutions.
Additionally, we present multiple success stories of cost and delivery time reduction.

2. Advantages and Cautions of Using Medical Translation Services

There are several advantages and cautions when pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies outsource translation to specialized external vendors.

2-1. Advantages of Using Medical Translation Services

It goes without saying that pharmaceutical companies and medical device companies have extensive knowledge about individual drugs, medical devices, and their background information, but translation companies with proven experience in medical translation possess the know-how to quickly and consistently translate large volumes of medical-related documents.
They can respond with a sense of urgency for the rapid application and market launch of drugs and medical devices, and contribute to the global release of drugs and medical devices through multilingual localization.

2-2. Points to Note When Using Medical Translation Services

When using medical translation services, the following points should be considered.
● Choose a translation company with a proven track record that provides services requiring specialized knowledge and accuracy in the medical field.
● Choose a translation company that thoroughly implements and utilizes AI, machine translation, and translation support tools to perform fast and efficient translations.

3. Factors Determining Medical Translation Fees and Market Rates

3-1. Factors Determining Medical Translation Fees

The factors that determine the cost of medical translation are as follows.

3-1-1. Translation Volume / Character Count

The most fundamental aspect of pricing is the word count of the document to be translated (in the case of English) or the character count (in the case of Japanese).
In this case, the unit price varies depending on the specialization and difficulty of the document to be translated, as well as the quality level required by the customer.

3-1-2. Time Required for Translation (Man-hours, Processes, Deadlines)

Sometimes, the fee is determined based on the required man-hours (estimated man-hours) rather than the word or character count.
By increasing the number of proofreading rounds or adding processes such as back-translation (a translation check method where, for English-Japanese translation, the translated Japanese is re-translated into English and compared with the original English text), even higher quality can be ensured, but the fee will tend to increase.
Conversely, if you want to reduce costs, it is possible to lower expenses by omitting or simplifying the translation review, or by choosing light editing instead of full editing for post-editing of machine translation.

In that case, it is important to understand what kind of quality compromises may arise due to adjustments.
Additionally, when reporting adverse event information about pharmaceuticals to authorities, there may be a need for translation on short notice, and in such cases, there may be a "rush fee" set.

3-1-3. Types and Number of Languages to be Translated

When a Japanese company releases a product simultaneously worldwide, it is necessary to translate into multiple languages.
Of course, the translation costs increase with the number of languages, and there are also costs for proofreading, but additionally, costs may rise for languages with a limited number of translators.

3-2. Market Prices for Medical Translation Services and Cases Where Additional Fees Occur

3-2-1. Market Prices for Medical Translation Services

Regarding the pricing of medical translation services, the industry organization JTF (Japan Translation Federation) provides guidelines for translation order prices (Guidelines for Translation Fees (Client Company Translation Order Prices)).
According to the above site, for "Medicine, Healthcare, and Pharmacy," the prices are set at 35 yen for English to Japanese translation (excluding tax) and 30 yen for Japanese to English translation (excluding tax), which are higher than other fields such as "Computer Manuals" and "General Science and Industrial Technology."
The actual fees are influenced not only by basic factors such as the expertise, difficulty, volume of translation, and deadline of the document, but also by the data format of the original and translated texts and the type and extent of necessary data processing.

3-2-2. Cases Where Additional Charges May Occur to Watch Out For

After the translation begins, additional work may arise, or the working hours may significantly exceed the initial plan.
Possible reasons for additional work or increased working hours include the following situations.

●When the original text is not in text data format and the characters are unclear, making OCR reading significantly difficult
●When modifications to the original text occur after the translation request

In such cases, the translation fees may increase compared to the initial estimate.

4. Points for Choosing Cost-Effective Medical Translation Services

Next, we will introduce points to consider in order to obtain cost-effective medical translation services.
Choosing a translation company that provides cost-effective medical translation services can lead to high satisfaction, while simply opting for a translation company with low rates may result in regret.
The following factors need to be carefully considered.

4-1. Companies with High Expertise and Quality

It is better to choose a company with highly specialized translators, even if it means incurring appropriate costs.

4-2. Companies Capable of Efficient Translation Using Technology

If it is a translation company with experience in translation support tools that utilize translation memories of existing translations and machine translation, you can expect not only cost reduction but also shorter delivery times.

4-3. Companies That Can Provide Solutions Beyond Translation

After the translation is complete, if it is a company that can handle content production such as multilingual translation, DTP, and online training as a package, you can expect not only comprehensive cost reduction but also shorter delivery times.

4-4. Companies with Solid Information Security

While it cannot be said that companies with low prices necessarily have poor information security, it is important to choose a company with a solid information security system, even if it costs more.
Companies that clearly state their information management policies on their websites and have many transactions with large corporations can be considered reliable.

4-5. Companies That Can Consult on Cost Performance

Customers have various situations regarding the required quality level and budget.
Additionally, depending on the project, there are things that are absolutely necessary even if they incur costs, and there are also options to reduce fees.
It is essential to choose a company that can discuss cost performance and respond to customer requests, such as wanting to keep costs low if it is for internal use only.

Free Download

Five Challenges and Solutions in Medical Translation

Introducing common challenges faced by many companies in medical translation and specific solutions.
Additionally, we present multiple success stories of cost and delivery time reduction.

5. Introduction to Human Science's Medical Translation Services

At Human Science, we offer a variety of medical and pharmaceutical translation services.
We address our customers' concerns about translation costs through translations by highly specialized translators, the use of translation support (CAT) tools such as Trados and Phrase TMS (formerly Memsource), as well as machine translation tools, and efforts to improve translation efficiency and quality.
If you are interested, please feel free to contact us.