Medical and Life Sciences content is very specific and complex by its very nature. If the message of your source content is not obvious in English, it is even less likely to be understood when translated to a target language.
Prior to moving into the localization phase, we recommend customers to conduct an initial review of their source product–be it documentation, software, or websites, to analyze and make modifications as necessary. We encourage using simple grammar structures and word choices as much as possible. As stated above, the quality of the translated product depends on the linguistic and technical quality of the source content.
A form of internationalization, preparing the source product for improved localizability is a quality practice that is critical to the relationship of the customer and the Language Service Providers. For translation alone, any inaccuracy in the source material will be repeated in all target languages, affecting both written and graphic information. The extent of the internationalization to source materials can be as extensive as re-writing the content to use Simplified English, or may simply involve modifications to document layout conventions such as tables, graphics, and word expansion, or regional conventions such as time, date, measurement units, etc.