Sworn Translation in Samsun

What sets Samsun apart in translation terms is that medical device manufacturing has been added to its being a port city. When those two sit together, two utterly different worlds of documentation appear: one working in the formulaic language of vessel and cargo papers, the other in the extremely strict terminology of health legislation.

Medical device files leave no room for error

With health products, translation is not marketing copy but a regulatory requirement. The instructions for use, the technical file, the risk analysis, the clinical evaluation and the label texts are bound to one another; when a term used in one of them changes in another, it is recorded as a discrepancy at inspection. In warnings and contraindications, no choice that softens the meaning can be accepted. On files of this kind we do not hand over the translation on its own: the list of terms used goes with it.

The port’s own paperwork

Work on the port side moves to an entirely different rhythm: bills of lading, cargo manifests, insurance policies, seafarer documents, survey and damage reports. These are usually short texts, but extremely urgent ones. Given the structure of Black Sea trade, a substantial part of this paperwork is requested in Russian; English, as the common language of shipping, turns up somewhere in every file.

Field	Document	Leading language
Medical devices	Instructions for use, technical file	English
Medical devices	Tender and procurement papers	Russian, Arabic
Port and shipping	Cargo and insurance documents	Russian, English
Agriculture	Product and analysis documents	English
University	Diploma, academic transcript	English, Arabic

Where Russian stands in Samsun

Demand for Russian here comes not from tourism but from trade. The relationships maintained with buyers and suppliers around the Black Sea basin generate translation of contracts, invoices, product documents and correspondence. Arabic, for its part, appears both in the export of health products and in the student documents that originate with the university. You can compare the rates for these three languages on the languages page.

Bidding for tenders abroad

For businesses producing health products, the route into foreign markets is most often public procurement. That makes tender files a significant heading among the work originating in Samsun: qualification documents, manufacturing authorisations, quality certificates, reference lists, annexes to the letter of tender and product technical files. Because the file goes through a single assessment as a whole, the documents inside it must not contradict one another.

The most time-consuming part of these files is noticing where the same information has been written up differently in different documents. If a product appears under its trade name in one place and under its model code in another, the translation has to preserve that distinction while keeping the connection visible. Otherwise the assessor may think two different products are being spoken of.

Managing the timetable is decisive too. Because tender calendars are not flexible, delivering the file in parts often turns out to be the more workable approach: the sections that are ready go first, and the rest are added as they are completed. That way the applicant can assemble the file without everything piling up on the final day.

Nor does the work end once the tender is won. Delivery schedules, inspection and acceptance records, training materials and after-sales support documents go on being translated for the life of the contract. Because of that continuity, keeping a pool of terms from the first file onwards brings both time and consistency to later deliveries.

On the port side the picture is completely different: there the work arrives one piece at a time and over very short periods. Because a shipment left waiting produces cost directly, turnaround on these files is talked about in hours. One and the same office managing two different rhythms at once is what makes Samsun operationally interesting.

We do not have a branch in Samsun; both the medical device files and the port paperwork are completed at the office in Ankara. What that comes to in practice is this: because a shipment left waiting on the port side produces cost directly, turnaround is talked about in hours, and there is no need for those hours to be spent on the road. When the file arrives online the translation begins at once, and the electronically signed copy is delivered the same day.

What running the work remotely gives the exporter

Translating a shipping document or a tender file is usually a job measured in hours. When the file arrives online the translation begins at once and the electronically signed copy is delivered the same day; the wet-signed original follows behind by courier. On recurring files such as health products, later work both speeds up and gains in consistency as the pool of terms builds. You can look at the scope on the translation services page.