3 things made the most of medical translation works in my career till now

Hello! I’m Satoko, a freelance English-Japanese medical translator living in Sapporo, Hokkaido.

 Before becoming a translator, I have been working in the customer service center of the pharmaceutical wholesale company for 10 years. In this article, I will introduce what I did there and 3 things made the most of medical translation works in 10 years experiences working there.

1. Job description in the pharmaceutical wholesale company

In the pharmaceutical wholesale company, I was in charge of receiving orders for pharmaceutical products and medical instruments from the hospitals and pharmacies. I received orders for broad range of pharmaceutical products from headache medicines to anti-cancer agent, that are from a few hundred yen to several hundred thousand yen. If an urgent prescription is issued, it may be necessary to make arrangements within a set time and deliver it to the medical institution.

 Also, I received orders for various medical instruments including needles, syringes, gauze, pulse oximeters and so on.

 In addition, I was inquired various matters about the time of arrivals of items customers ordered, the information of pharmaceutical products and medical instruments, and distribution status.

2．3 things made the most of medical translation works

1. Expertise of pharmaceutical products and medical instruments

After joining the customer service center of the pharmaceutical wholesale company, I was asked to write a large number of the name of the pharmaceutical product during training period. This is because the staff of the customer service center should be able to listen the name of the pharmaceutical product at once as talk period should make shorter to let customers (=health care providers) dedicate into the care for their patients.  Currently, I can read English name of almost pharmaceutical products at once.

 During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a time when there was a serious shortage of cough medicine. At that time, I was inquired “Are there any cough medicine?” so many times. I answered such inquiries with the help of pharmacist. For 10 years, while processing more than 100 orders per a day, my expertise was accumulated little by little such as cough medicine, laxative, cephem antibiotics… and so on. The new pharmaceutical products are constantly being developed, so I would like to continue learning about information of clinical trials and new products launches.

2. Focus to maintain accuracy

What if wrong pharmaceutical product is arranged? What if it is prescribed to the patient without being noticed? It will be life-threatening. Receiving products over the phone and creating vouchers likely to occur in any industry, but I think it is the job that requires the most attention and concentration. I believe that the attention and concentration cultivated in this process will also be used in translation.

3.  Experience of "mini presentation" for the healthcare providers based on the expertise

 In my 10 years experiences, I have inquired these things like below:

・Is it alright to get vaccinated （product name） after （other product name）?

・There is a patient who says the tablets of (product name) is too large, so I want to change prescribe to powdered medicine, but could you tell me the dose in case of powdered medicine?

・How long does it take for (the product name of Flu test kit) to show the result？

Some inquiries are answered by the staff of customer service center with the pharmacist, and other inquiries are escalated to other agency like pharmaceutical manufacturer. I think that the customer’s impression will change whether I “just read what is written” (without understanding anything) or “understand the content and present it when I answered the inquiries with package insert or leaflet. That is why I learned about pharmaceutical products and medical devices. Thanks to this, when I’m in charged of translating medical device manuals, I was able to understand better how health care providers use products and I can translate while thinking about which parts they focus on reading.

Looking forward to the work consultations from you, around the world! Feel free to contact via Contact page.