Scanned medical documents Thread poster: Giovanna Looney
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Hi I am new. I have received 100 scanned pages, all medical documents. Lots of medical jargon. The request is to have all documents translated. It is not editable, my question is how do you deal with a project like this? is there any special tool I can use? is word by word translation the best approach? it wil take me a long time I appreciate your help
| | | | Michael Beijer 
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:16
Member (2009)
Dutch to English
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| ABBYY FineReader 15 OCR Editor | Feb 16 |
I have tried many things over the years and nothing really beats ABBYY FineReader 15 OCR Editor. You can save yourself a lot of trouble down the line by checking each page in ABBYY and selecting the correct recognition modes, such as Tables, Text, etc.
Once you have the Word doc, make sure to also run TransTools' Document Cleaner, which will remove all kinds of crap that would otherwise result in tags in your CAT tool.
... See more I have tried many things over the years and nothing really beats ABBYY FineReader 15 OCR Editor. You can save yourself a lot of trouble down the line by checking each page in ABBYY and selecting the correct recognition modes, such as Tables, Text, etc.
Once you have the Word doc, make sure to also run TransTools' Document Cleaner, which will remove all kinds of crap that would otherwise result in tags in your CAT tool.
• https://pdf.abbyy.com/
• https://www.translatortools.net/docs/transtools/doccleaner
Michael
PS: and don't forget to charge the client for this, as it can be quite a lot of work sometimes!
[Edited at 2024-02-16 16:22 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Frank Hedes
Brazil
Local time: 11:16
Hebrew to Portuguese
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| Scanned medical documents | Feb 16 |
Hello! Firstly, because it is not editable, this is where the work of editing and formatting each document as it is in the source language comes in, that is, if you are going to use CAT TOOL, this is the way to translate it later. We know that doctors' writing is horrible, especially if there is jargon. You will have to know these jargons.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any tool that translates handwritten texts perfectly, as all it takes is one misalignment and that's it, everything will ... See more Hello! Firstly, because it is not editable, this is where the work of editing and formatting each document as it is in the source language comes in, that is, if you are going to use CAT TOOL, this is the way to translate it later. We know that doctors' writing is horrible, especially if there is jargon. You will have to know these jargons.
Unfortunately, I don't know of any tool that translates handwritten texts perfectly, as all it takes is one misalignment and that's it, everything will be wrong.
Unless the writing is perfectly legible, as well as the printed material in the document, both are perfectly aligned, there may be a small 50% chance of it being translatable.
If you are very good at translating word for word, and then putting together the context of the handwritten sentence, go ahead, but know that it will take a lot of your time.
For me the best approach is to transcribe the entire document, edit and format it as closely as possible to the original, and start translating. As you can see, in fact, in addition to the translation, there are 2 more jobs that must be informed to the contractor for approval, as they must also be charged. As a result, the contractor's initial time will no longer be the same, it will be tripled.
He must agree to your price or he will not have your translation done, or if it is done unprofessionally, it will be of poor quality. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Zea_Mays
Italy
Local time: 15:16
English to German
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Do you know the client very well?
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| Welcome to the club | Feb 16 |
Welcome to the club... This kind of documentation is what medical translators eat for breakfast. To deal with it efficiently, you need:
- At least some background in medicine
- Good typing skills and memory
- Experience: the more of these documents you translate, the more templates remain in your library
Word-for-word translation is actually the worst approach. It's a quick way to get disqualified for professional incompetence and lack of diligence. I don't... See more Welcome to the club... This kind of documentation is what medical translators eat for breakfast. To deal with it efficiently, you need:
- At least some background in medicine
- Good typing skills and memory
- Experience: the more of these documents you translate, the more templates remain in your library
Word-for-word translation is actually the worst approach. It's a quick way to get disqualified for professional incompetence and lack of diligence. I don't want to sound harsh, but if you don't fully understand the meaning of the texts you translate (including the jargon), then you have no business translating them. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | What Anton said, obviously! | Feb 17 |
If you do not understand the source well enough to know where and how to find the most accurate ways to render it into target text, you cannot translate it. If you meant more along the lines of 'how to deal with the fact the these pages are scanned', then, yes, a tool that shall OCR each page, turn it into Word format and do it well enough that it preserves 90% of the text accurately is needed.
There are some free ones, online, that work well enough, but for a 100-page order, I'd in... See more If you do not understand the source well enough to know where and how to find the most accurate ways to render it into target text, you cannot translate it. If you meant more along the lines of 'how to deal with the fact the these pages are scanned', then, yes, a tool that shall OCR each page, turn it into Word format and do it well enough that it preserves 90% of the text accurately is needed.
There are some free ones, online, that work well enough, but for a 100-page order, I'd invest in a professional one -- you must pay for. Perhaps you can also try to get a free 30-day trial of a professional PDF reading tool. Like Adobe Acrobat Pro DC, or the one Michael suggested.
I would charge EUR 35 (GBP 30) per very legible, easy to OCR page, up to EUR 55 (GBP 50) per page with loads of handwritten text I need to fill in myself.
You can charge your per every word rate if some of these pages are a single document consisting of nothing but simple text. No layout fixing, no tables, no handwritten text and the document is over 500 words long. But anything that will take you half an hour to OCR and produce a layout similar to the source should be treated as a separate single document and charged a minimum rate for. (EUR 35 to 55)
I've never had a 100 scanned pages order but have done a good deal of scanned documents in smaller orders (from 1 to 10 documents per order) and these rates make it all worthwhile, since there's a good deal of work to be done before you get to the very translation work.
Also, like Anton said, if you do end up finishing the project, keep all the documents, to use them as templates for the next assignment that includes the same document.
You do not want to charge this simply per word, like it's just another text order, not all of it anyway. Your fee for this project must include compensation for having to OCR and editing the layout, since often this can require quite some time and effort.
Do not be fooled by 'this is huge order can we have discounts' nonsense, since working on hundred pages of medical documents might well mean you will have to turn assignments from other agencies down, since you sound like this is your first assignment of such nature and there will be a (in the beginning slow then hopefully quicker and quicker) learning curve.
Ask for at least a two-week deadline, so you can have enough time to do this well, and you can always hand it in before the agreed deadline.
Good luck.
I hope you did not agree to do this on the cheap. Do not do documents under 500 words for less than some sort of reasonable minimum rate at all. Minimum rates go from EUR 35 to 50.
Renegotiate the rate and do this, if you can handle the translation part of the work, and once you emerge on the other side of this project you will be quite experienced in turning scanned PDFs into workable Word documents. Look at the OCR bit of the work not as a nuisance, but as getting paid to learn a new skill, and it doesn't get any better than that.
If you don't mind me saying, but you sound like you need a mentor. Try finding an experienced freelance translator to mentor you.
So, the best of luck! Perhaps let us know how it all went?
[Edited at 2024-02-17 14:50 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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...you should outsource the copy work first to an external, e.g. via the job board here on Proz. Ask for the "best rate" and you'll wonder how cheap, easy, and fast you will get back the texts. Ask for a testpiece and check the quality, but don't ask for all the sheets as a test. Or ask all 500 applicants for a free test. That's the usual way almost all of us experienced in the beginning.
[Bearbeitet am 2024-02-17 06:03 GMT]
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I do agree with everything that was said before, but are you sure this isn’t some kind of a scam? The fact that you ask if word by word translation is the best approach shows me that you lack experience in this kind of work and it makes me wonder why you were approached to translate 100 pages of medical records. Please forgive me if I’m mistaken, but your profile says nothing about you…
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Samuel Murray
Netherlands
Local time: 15:16
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
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Giovanna Looney wrote:
I have received 100 scanned pages, all medical documents.
Wit lots of handwritten portions, right? You need to be an expert expert in that field to translate such files, because people who write things in handwriting do not assume that the text is going to be translated Doctors are not careful with how they write, especially if they believe that their writing will be read by other people in their own field. They assume that if they're being ambiguous or unclear, their reader will understand what they had meant or will be familiar with the special abbreviations that they use in their particular subfield. This means that unless you know what doctors mean when they are being ambiguous, you should not accept this job, unless your client is happy that your translation will be guesswork.
Typically, if the documents are forms that were filled in, you'd be required to recreate those forms, although your recreation doesn't have to look perfect -- it just has to show the exact same content as the original in roughly the exact same locations on the page. If you're lucky, there are many repeated forms, so you should be able to create one template and then fill it in with the translations each time.
It is unlikely that you would be able to use a CAT tool for this... unless... unless perhaps you can ask a typist to re-create the documents in Word *and* get the typist to type the handwritten text for you. Then all you need to do is proofread the typist's work against the original, to ensure that she typed it correctly, and THEN you can use a CAT tool. That said, you'd have to disable auto-propagation, because in medical files, identical abbreviations in different places can mean very different things.
Frank Hedes wrote:
For me the best approach is to transcribe the entire document, edit and format it as closely as possible to the original, and start translating.
Exactly. Normally, the translation steps are: load the file into the CAT tool, and translate. In this case, the translation steps are: create the files in Word (with tables, etc.), type in the source text into those files, then load the file into the CAT tool, and translate.
The reason I suggested a typist is because sometimes, some typists are experts at formatting in Word and would be able to recreate the documents in Word a lot faster than you ever can. And they can type in the source text much faster than you can. Remember to tell the typist to recreate tables as actual tables (not tabs) and not to use any floating text boxes.
One hundred documents......... it's time to think outside the box.
[Edited at 2024-02-17 10:12 GMT]
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