Specialist medical translation service for clinical research, journals, and regulatory submissions
Research Gold's medical translation service delivers publication-grade translations of clinical research, manuscripts, protocols, patient information leaflets, regulatory documents, and conference materials. Every translation is performed by a translator with both linguistic credentials and a graduate-level life-sciences background, then reviewed by a second specialist for terminology accuracy and idiomatic flow.
We translate between English and Arabic, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Turkish, and Bahasa Indonesia. Arabic-English-Arabic is our deepest pair, supporting researchers across Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Egypt, and Jordan.
Document types we translate
Medical and academic translation is not the same as general translation. A general translator can render an article competently but will mistranslate odds ratio, incidence, adverse event, per-protocol, intention-to-treat, case-fatality rate, and dozens of other terms that change a paper's clinical meaning. Our translators have published their own peer-reviewed work and have completed sworn-translator or American Translators Association (ATA) certification.
Document types covered:
- Manuscripts and journal articles (translation for submission to international journals or for publication in your local language).
- Systematic review and meta-analysis full reports, including PRISMA-P protocols, search strategies, and forest-plot legends.
- Clinical study protocols (Phase I to Phase IV), informed consent forms, patient information leaflets.
- Case report forms (CRFs), study reports (CSRs), and trial summaries.
- Regulatory submissions to the FDA, EMA, MHRA, Saudi FDA, NUPCO, and equivalent national authorities.
- Patient-reported outcome (PRO) instruments, with linguistic and cultural validation following the ISPOR Good Practices.
- Conference abstracts, posters, and slide decks.
- Grant applications for international funders.
- Theses and dissertations for binding and submission.
- Hospital and clinical SOPs, training manuals, accreditation materials.
Two-translator workflow for medical translation services
Every project follows a translation, edit, proofread (TEP) workflow:
- Translator 1 drafts the target text. Clinical and statistical terms are pulled from a medical glossary anchored in MeSH, ICD-11, MedDRA, and the CONSORT, STROBE, PRISMA, SPIRIT reporting guidelines.
- Translator 2 (independent) compares source to target line by line, flags any divergence in clinical meaning, and harmonizes terminology.
- Senior reviewer (PhD methodologist for research papers, or pharmacist or physician for clinical documents) reads only the target text and flags anything that does not read like native scientific prose.
- Final QA checks numbers, units, decimal separators, dates, drug doses, and statistical results against the source.
This is the standard expected by international medical journals and regulatory authorities. A single-translator workflow, common in cheap online services, misses approximately 1 in 4 clinical-meaning errors in our internal audits.
Arabic medical translation, English to Arabic and Arabic to English
Our Arabic specialist team is based across Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE. We handle:
- Modern Standard Arabic for journals, theses, regulatory documents, and patient-facing materials in Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, Egypt, Jordan, and the wider Arabic-speaking world.
- Saudi Arabia-specific terminology for SFDA submissions and KAUST or KFSH&RC manuscript translation.
- Egyptian medical terminology for Egyptian universities and hospitals.
- Linguistic validation of patient-reported outcome instruments (FACT, EORTC, SF-36, PROMIS) into Arabic, following ISPOR good-practice guidance.
Arabic is a particularly demanding pair for clinical writing, English source documents are dense, abbreviation-heavy, and use Latin scientific names that must be rendered correctly in Arabic transliteration. Our translators publish in Arabic-language journals themselves and understand the conventions.
Pricing for our medical translation service
Pricing is per source word and depends on direction, density, and turnaround. Standard 5- to 7-business-day turnaround:
- English to Arabic or Arabic to English, $0.14 to $0.18 per source word.
- English to Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, German, $0.12 to $0.16 per source word.
- English to Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, Korean, $0.16 to $0.20 per source word.
- Linguistic validation of PRO instruments (forward, back, reconciliation, cognitive debriefing), $1,800 to $3,200 per language, depending on instrument length.
- Regulatory document translation with TEP and certification, $0.18 to $0.24 per source word.
- Rush turnaround (48 to 72 hours), 1.5x standard rate.
A 4,000-word manuscript from English to Arabic typically runs $560 to $720 with full TEP, certified by a sworn translator. Send us the document and your target deadline; you get a fixed quote within 24 hours.
Translation versus editing, choosing the right service
If you wrote a paper in English as a non-native speaker and want a native English editor to polish it, that is English language editing, part of our academic editing service. If you wrote a paper in Arabic and want it published in an English-language journal, that is translation, this service. If you wrote a paper in English originally but want an Arabic version for a local journal or for institutional review, that is also translation.
Many manuscripts go through both: write in your native language, translate to English, then have a native English manuscript editor polish the translated text for journal submission. We can scope the bundle for you and quote a single bundled fee that is typically 15 percent below the sum of standalone fees.
Combining medical translation services with our research services
Saudi and Gulf researchers often need a complete pipeline, systematic review or meta-analysis in English, statistical analysis in English, manuscript translation to Arabic for a local thesis defense, then manuscript editing of the English version for submission to a Q1 international journal. We bundle these workflows under our Saudi research services and Gulf research services hubs.
For thesis defense, we translate only the Arabic-language sections required by the university (cover, abstract, defense form). The full thesis stays in English. This is the most common Saudi PhD setup.
Confidentiality and certification
Every project is covered by a non-disclosure agreement. Translators do not retain source files after delivery. For regulatory and accreditation submissions, we provide a certification letter signed by the lead translator stating the translation is a faithful and accurate rendering, with the translator's qualifications and contact details. The certificate is accepted by the SFDA, FDA, EMA, MHRA, and major university bodies.