The field of medical translation is one of the most complex and arduous fields in the translation industry. The reason behind this notion is the fact that the chances of errors are not acceptable. Repercussions pertaining to inaccuracies and misinterpretations of medical documents are so high that mistakes cannot be afforded. When people’s lives are at stake, you have to be perfect. Nonetheless, to enable error-free functioning of operations, the management processes in Medical translation services have to be properly structured.
Proper structure is the result of an efficient decision-making process. Decisions in organizations are made by managers. From finalizing the vision of the firm to the day-to-day activities, everything goes according to the wishes of the manager. If we talk about medical document translation, a manager will be responsible for conducting research into the target market, meanwhile employing all the expert professional medical translators who will perform the duties.
If it’s that easy, how come some managers perform better than others? The reason lies behind the decision-making process. So let’s discuss, how good managers make decisions in medical translation agencies.
Proper Identification of a Problem
In medical document translation services, a manager has to oversee a lot of dysfunctionality. They might pertain to medical translators leaving the organization or not being able to maintain the standard of translations in the medical industry. So in this situation, the manager first has to understand the problem and not confuse it with the symptom. Hence, the issue or the problem, in this case, will not be people leaving the firm, but a poor employee satisfaction level. Moreover, if customers are not availing your medical translation service, it may lead to a decline in sales. Now, the decline is merely a symptom. But the real problem can be mediocre or below-par quality standards, extremely high prices, or poor advertising.
Identifying Decision Criteria
After properly identifying the problem, the manager then decides his decision criteria. So, in this case, a manager of a translation agency will shortlist the aspects he will consider every time he looks for a problem. So the symptoms of the problem will actually guide him to decide what the actual problem might be. For instance, if symptoms are related to employee turnover, then the problem pertains to the internal operations of the organization. Hence, the manager will contact the HR Department. Secondly, if the symptom is poor feedback from clients, then the problem originates from the quality assurance department who has to ascertain that the medical translated documents are accurate.
Allotting Weights to Various Criteria
Once the manager decides on his criteria for identifying the problems, he will allocate weights to them in order of priority. The following table is an example of allotting weights in Medical translation services;
| Employee satisfaction level | Client satisfaction level | The quality standard of Medical Translation | |
| Declining sales | 5 | 4 | 7 |
| Employees leaving | 8 | 3 | 2 |
| Poor feedback | 6 | 8 | 8 |
So in the above table, the manager has allotted the weights out of ten. The items on the left vertical side mention the symptoms, while the horizontal side is the actual problems. So the manager has ranked how each symptom relates to the actual root problem. The highest number shows the exact problem for that particular symptom.
Developing Alternatives
The next step in this program would be to enable a possibility of alternatives. These alternatives will allow the manager to find different ways to resolve the particular problems mentioned in the table above. Hence, the manager needs to think outside the box and explore different options. Taking polls from within the organization and outside the organization would definitely help as well.
Analyzing the Alternatives
After the manager develops all the alternatives, the next step would be to analyze them. The manager would decide and evaluate the options that he has and how is he going to respond to the research he has done. So in the case of medical translations, a manager needs to evaluate that why there is a poor quality of translations produced by the company. Is it because of the poor standards of human translators? And if the reason is yes, then why is the organization is hiring those translators? These questions constitute the analysis part.
Evaluation of the decision
Continuing the point mentioned in the above part, the manager will have to change the hiring process. But in doing so, he needs a well-experienced professional medical translator who is actually good in his job and knows how to differentiate a good medical translator from a bad one. Finding that person, and asking him to become part of the hiring process, so that eventually the translation quality could be improved.
But the important thing to realize is that this is just one option of how the alternatives are evaluated. And the rest of the alternatives will follow the same evaluation method as mentioned above.
Conclusion
Conclusively, we can proclaim that after the manager evaluates the options and decides to take an initiative, he will have to wait for the results to appears. The output received will showcase the effectiveness of the decision-making process of the manager. This is a dynamic process, meaning the alternatives will be different every time. However, the structure of the decision-making process will remain the same. And if decisions are made by managers following a specific structure, it will help to resolve the issues much quicker and efficiently.
