Client Profile
Qualisys is the company to go to if your business happens to handle hazardous materials or dangerous goods of any type. Their interdisciplinary team of experts continuously researches applicable laws and regulations across the globe, keeping you and your business abreast of important changes and therefore safe. In practical terms, Qualisys makes sure your Material Safety Data Sheets are correct and up to date.
We have met with Qualisys experts back in 2018, initially to translate their database into just a few languages. We relished the challenge and were subsequently tasked with translating said database to a plethora of lingoes.
Challenges and Solutions
| Terminology | Solution |
| Qualisys employs a diverse team of experts in the fields of software development, system integration, pharmacy, biology, chemistry, and law. Their database was not only full of highly specialised terms from these fields, its translation also had to be legally-aware and fully integrated with the company systems. | Our technical language experts quickly realised they could divide the material into three subgroups: chemical compounds (i.e., 2-Acetylaminofluorene, 5-hydroxy-N-methyl-2-pyrrolidone), chemical terms (alkaline, low volatile liquid), and phrases typical of Material Safety Data Sheets (“The product causes narcotic-like effects”). This separation gave us the chance to assign appropriate rules to each subgroup, and to assign legal experts to take a closer look at the last one. This in turn made a huge difference to our speed and accuracy. |
| Safety | Solution |
| One of the main points of this job was to deliver a perfect translation… or else! Qualisys put their implicit trust in us, and we knew a false translation of any of the terms could end up with lives being lost, not to even mention the legal fallout to Qualisys and Studio Gambit by extension. | This is why we are happy to be an agency – similarly to Qualisys, we also employ experts in the previously mentioned fields. We also have a special procedure for such hazardous materials – pun fully intended. We were happy to rigorously edit and check the translations so they turned out to be on point. |
| Breadth vs depth | Solution |
| The material to be translated was highly specialised, sure, but it was also global. Qualisys serves its clients across the globe and wanted the database to be accessible in many languages, some of which very difficult to acquire due to lack of providers. | Over our five-year collaboration with Qualisys, we have broadened our offer to include Indo-Asian languages, amongst others. We invite you to check out the end of this article for ‘Language pairs translated’ – neat, right? At this point, Qualisys comes to us exclusively when they want to add new terms or the whole new language to their database, and we are always happy to oblige. |
Conclusion
This was such a complex challenge, we loved it! It had everything: high level of specialisation, intensity, high stakes… We are proud of ourselves for making it such a breeze to work through nowadays. Qualisys experts are happy with what we produce, and we are happy to have such a great client.
Quick Facts
Target languages (translation from English):
Europe: Bulgarian, Bosnian, Czech, German, Danish, Spanish, Greek, Estonian, French, Finnish, Hungarian, Croatian, Italian, Icelandic, Kazakh, Lithuanian, Latvian, Norwegian, Dutch, Portuguese (BR), Polish, Romanian, Russian, Swedish, Slovenian, Slovak, Serbian, Turkish, Ukrainian
Asia: Hindi, Indonesian (Bahasa), Japanese, Korean, Malay (Bahasa), Thai, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese
Specialization fields: Pharmacy, Chemistry, Law
Project types: Database translation, Material Safety Data Sheets
Number of translated words: 400,000 and counting
