The Patient-Reported Outcome (PRO) Item That Cost a Trial Its Endpoint Item 4 looked perfect. Durante la última semana, ¿con qué frecuencia el cansancio le impidió realizar sus actividades habituales? Fluent. Natural. The kind of Spanish a reviewer reads once and ticks. Patients answer the item they read, not the one you meant The English said “during the past 7 days”. The Spanish said la última semana. And a patient in Seville filling in a tablet on a Wednesday morning reads la última semana...
10 days ago • 2 min read
You may know this parable. It circulates in many versions, and nobody knows who told it first. A banker on holiday watches a fisherman unload a small catch at midday. He asks why the man doesn’t stay out longer. The banker sketches the plan. More fish, a bigger boat, a fleet, a company. Sell it in fifteen to twenty years for millions. “And then what?” “Then you retire to a coastal village. Fish a little. Spend time with your family. Enjoy evenings with friends.” The fisherman smiles. He...
18 days ago • 2 min read
You know this email. A PM at a small biotech writes on a Thursday afternoon. “We need our patient questionnaire in Spanish, French and German. Can you turn it round by next Friday? Budget is tight.” Great - a direct client. Quote it, deliver it, invoice it. Stop. Read that again. A patient questionnaire in a clinical trial isn’t a document. It’s a measurement instrument. If the Spanish version measures something different from the English source, the data across sites stops lining up - and...
24 days ago • 2 min read
Most translators picture a high earner’s week as their own week, only fuller. More files, longer days, faster fingers. If I just worked harder, I’d get there. No. You wouldn’t. Picture a Tuesday at €150 an hour instead. 09:00 - A 40-minute call with a sponsor’s PM. No files change hands. She asks where the recall period in item 7 might break in Latin American Spanish. He answers, and she books the full linguistic validation on the call. 10:00 - Two hours of reconciliation on a PRO instrument....
about 1 month ago • 2 min read
In mid-October, a client of mine who owns a linguistic validation company heads to a major industry event. The question lying squarely on the table: How do we make sure sponsors already know us before they reach the stand? The company runs linguistic validation and cognitive debriefing for clinical trials. ISO 9001-certified, rigorous methodology. And like most specialist vendors, much better at the actual work than at talking about it. Most vendors treat a conference as the start of the...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
For a full two years I was in desperate cold outreach mode to pharma PMs and got virtually no joy for my efforts. Then I stopped writing subject lines that described me and started writing ones that named the prospect's problem. Here are five that did get replies. By all means swipe them. Your LV timeline vs. your site activation date Names a real deadline conflict. PMs open anything that touches their timeline. Cognitive debriefing sample size - quick check Sounds like an internal query, not...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
About three years ago now, a longtime potboiler client emailed me: "We're moving general translation to AI. Rates are dropping 40% across the board." I read that line twice. Then I did the maths on what a 40% cut would do to my business. It wasn't survivable. Most translators are living this right now - rates in freefall, machine output good enough for general text, and a client base that no longer sees the difference between "translated" and "translated well." Here's what I didn't do: panic,...
about 2 months ago • 3 min read
I ran a LinkedIn ad this week for my own translator training next Thursday 10 September 16h. Not a client's product. My own - How to Become a Key Translator of Influence, the authority framework and business asset building training I've spent months building. My name on the copy, my money behind the click, my rate implicit in every word. If nobody clicks, that's not an algorithm problem. That's a you problem. The ad ran. People did click. A few dozen free webinar registries. Then, out of the...
2 months ago • 3 min read
If you already work in medical or life sciences translation, you've likely felt it: agency rates keep falling, even for specialised medical work. The way out isn't working faster - it's moving into work agencies can't commodify. Linguistic Validation (LV) in clinical trials is that work. Here's what most translators miss: LV isn't medical translation with extra steps. It's a regulated, multi-stage process - and cognitive debriefing is the "V." Without it, you're not doing LV; you're doing...
2 months ago • 3 min read