Streamlining the Review Cycle

Michael Oettli, nlg GmbH

Santa Clara, October 10th

nlg GmbH

• Localization service provider to the Healthcare Industry (Medical Devices, Diagnostics, Pharmaceutical) for more than 10 years

• Long-term relationship with major corporate clients

• Headquarters in Regensburg, Germany and Production Center in Thessaloniki, Greece; 42 employees

• Technology solutions provided as an integrated part of our localization management services: we do not sell technology tools or development services.

• Experienced IT developers on staff, as customized technology development is a major service focus at nlg

• Agile software development approach with Scrum project management

• ICR is an essential part of the workflow for many industries, especially for Healthcare due to Regulatory requirements

• Usually performed by product managers, application specialists, sales people and others in addition to their normal workload; often not given high priority

• Reviewers are not linguists and often do not refer to existing reference material, glossaries and TMs

• Additional work is required to update TMs with all review changes and to incorporate reviewer feedback into other ongoing projects

• Tendency towards more and more involvement of LSP in the review process to either manage the process and reviewers or actually perform the review using qualified and experienced subject matter experts with the required medical background

In-Country Review as seen by an LSP

• Scanned PDF with handwritten corrections

• Annotated PDF with corrections and comments (in local language)

• MS Word documents with tracked changes

• Bilingual Excel file with source and target segments side by side

• Some TMS with an integrated review function

• Email or MS Word doc with list of corrections, global changes

• Phone call to discuss changes – no written record

• Other

In-Country Review Output Varies

• Review process is a black hole which can take months to be finalized, no control and status overview of review progress possible.

• LSP often does not receive review changes, so TMs are not updated, and feedback does not reach the translators

• Incorporation of review changes is usually a time-consuming process:

- ICR files are sent to the translators in order to incorporate, comment or reject corrections

- Corrections need to be incorporated in final files and bilingual files

- TM needs to be updated by cleaning up corrected bilingual files

- LSP often needs to check if all ICR corrections are being incorporated by the translator teams

- If translators don’t agree with corrections a feedback loop needs to be started

Pain Points

• Ability to better manage, schedule and control the reviewer, the review process and the review progress

• Ability for the reviewer to view validated terminology, especially important when reviewers change or multiple reviewers work on the same document

• Ability to have multiple reviewers work simultaneously

• Ability to easily handle multiple project files

• Ability to work offline and online (company’s restrictions need to be taken into account)

• Easy to work in, clear instructions

• Features that may be required by QA and Regulatory such as review task sign off, assessment and categorization of errors need to be possible

Desired Process Improvements: Client

• Direct incorporation of review changes into final files with automatic TM updates

• Ability to generate reviewer change reports for review and control of change implications

• Ability to comment on or reject review changes

• Automated and transparent commenting workflow between client, reviewer, LSP and translator

Desired Process Improvements: LSP

• Support a variety of structured and unstructured file formats

• Formatted preview mode required

• Ability to connect to CMS and TMS systems

• Online version needs to be supported by multiple web browsers

• Support sign-off templates for reviewers

• Support advance project scheduling and reviewer assignment / reassignment based on reviewer availability

• Facilitate reviewer selection through classification of reviewers by areas of expertise

• Provide an overview of projects, costs, timeframes, status

• Generate a variety of reports (action history, log reports)

Some Desired System Requirements

Next Level Review System:

Next Level Review System: Client Dashboard

Next Level Review System : Reviewer Availability & Assignments, Project Set Up

Next Level Review System: Reviewer Dashboard

Next Level Review System Workflow: Select files

Next Level Review System Workflow: View Source and Target Segments

Translated version to be reviewed English source to reference

Next Level Review System Workflow: View Formatted Source Content

Translated version to be reviewed English source PDF

Next Level Review System Workflow : Check terminology

Terminology question -> Reviewer references the TM & Glossary

Next Level Review System Workflow : Check terminology

Terminology check (term not found) -> Reviewer references the TM & Glossary

Next Level Review System Workflow : Search TM and files

Next Level Review System Workflow : Integrated QA summary report

Next Level Review System Workflow : Final Review Report

Next Level Review System: Client Dashboard of Completion Status

Michael Oettli, nlg GmbHmoettli@nlgworldwide.com