Working daily to major medical, insurance companies and
legal presents all kinds of different challenges, ranging from a wide variety
of pairs of rare languages that require immediate, to having to deal with
hieroglyphs translation almost illegible manuscripts which many customers
send us to translate, expecting the same quality at the same price. And
Yes, sometimes it's terrible.
First, we will describe the challenges of translatable
content written by hand. You should know the different trades to show different
peculiarities when it comes to translate content. The doctors are just one
of them. Many times, does not make much sense is the result of a bad
grammar (for example, use scarce signs of punctuation, the incorrect sentence
structure, gender or number disagreement, etc.).
Another challenge in health insurance claims comes from
local brands of prescription drugs. This, along with poor penmanship,
difficult to translators when they seek local brand names. Sometimes weep
asking for more context that will help you to understand what medication you
may be prescribed. Full file with printed reports of the clinical records
of the claimant can certainly help.
Scribble with a bad letter is not the only
danger. These documents usually are scanned at low resolution copies or,
even worse are now sent as a snapshot that is forwarded directly from a
Smartphone. The low resolution added more problems to a complicated
picture.
Let me add one more obstacle: bilingual
content! This may sound local to the us, but believe me it
happens! Many of clinical logs we receive every day come from patients
(including tourists) who come from Puerto Rico or any Caribbean island where
the population tends to be bilingual. Physicians are also bilingual and,
often, are used to read papers in English, so that they are accustomed to the
terminology or the acronyms used in English. However, the printed template
is in Spanish, what leads you to believe that the content written by hand is
also in that language. You are surprised to know that the content written
by hand is completed in English; and, what is worse, that health
professionals sometimes jump from English to the Spanish and vice versa.
The point is that having to deal with poorly handwritten
documents is expensive and slow.
To begin with, it's not even text that we can convert to
editable by any digital medium immediately. And as in the first place is
very hard to read, resources working in the translation will have to charge
additional hours only for the process of decryption. Even specify the
initial count of words at the beginning requires a certain degree of
conjecture, though estimates expect to cover the worst scenarios to make sure
that all the words in the original material has been cited correctly.
Then, what you can do to help make the process
easier? I guess that we always end up reaching the same conclusion here:
accept technology!
Many countries have their own laws that impose mandatory
digitization of documents when it comes to formal, legal, administrative or
even medical records. And it seems a good way to do it.
Documents and electronic records are replacing their
counterparts in role in many sectors, but the legal industry seems to take a
little longer to adjust. But while electronic documents can provide the
security that supports crucial information, if something unexpected could
happen to physical files, online legal documents meet the same evidentiary
requirements and? benefits than the standard paper copies?
In the past, the law stipulated that lawyers had to keep
printed copies of documents for seven years, which explained some of
resistances which still persist against relying solely on electronic
files. However, the evidence Act 1995 established that in the majority of
cases, the original documents are no longer necessary, making copies of
documents as good and as admissible as own originals, in the majority of legal
proceedings .
In theory, then, it is perfectly feasible that the law
firms will become fully electronic also.
It is better for the environment! However, even
though it would be much more practical for them to do so, there are other
factors that still represent them a conflict, covering completely the era of digital
documentation. As the digital economy continues taking root in the legal
industry, and the law changes as a result, it is possible that law firms will
increase the number of records and files that retain electronically, reducing
the cost of storage and increases the tranquility. However, old
habits are difficult to solve, and while there are legal reasons to keep at
least some printed copies, it is likely that many law firms to continue keeping
printed versions in all areas. Stay tuned for the pros and cons of the
digitization of documents and how the choices that we make today could
determine the way that the industry could change in the future.
