Terminology and Style Standards in Life Sciences Translation
In the highly regulated and scientifically complex world of life sciences, linguistic consistency is critical. Accurate terminology and standardized content presentation are essential not only for maintaining brand integrity, but also for meeting global regulatory requirements and ensuring patient safety.
At Sesen, we provide custom-built glossaries and linguistically rigorous style guides as part of our translation and localization services. These foundational tools drive quality across multilingual workflows, reduce revision cycles, and enable faster time-to-market for content ranging from clinical trial documentation to patient-facing materials.
Our glossary and style guide development processes are informed by best practices in terminology management and are tailored to meet the unique needs of clients in:
- Pharmaceuticals
- Biotechnology
- Medical Devices
- Contract Research Organizations (CROs)
- Healthcare Providers and Hospital Systems
By integrating linguistic resources into every stage of the translation lifecycle, Sesen ensures clarity, consistency, and compliance—across every market and every language.
Life Sciences Translation Glossaries
Translation glossaries are centralized, multilingual databases of approved terms used to ensure consistency and accuracy across all content types. In life sciences, where precision is non-negotiable, glossaries align scientific, clinical, and regulatory language across languages and markets. They serve as an essential reference for linguists, medical writers, and quality reviewers—especially for high-stakes content like clinical protocols, drug labeling, and regulatory dossiers.
Why Glossaries Matter in Life Sciences
Effective terminology management is key to reducing ambiguity and maintaining regulatory compliance. Sesen’s glossaries help life sciences organizations:
- Ensure Consistency across therapeutic areas, product lines, and submission formats
- Minimize Misinterpretation of critical scientific or patient-facing content
- Accelerate Turnaround by reducing revision cycles and rework
- Support Global Regulatory Compliance through standardized, approved terminology
Types of Glossaries Maintained by Sesen
Sesen builds and maintains domain-specific glossaries tailored to the specialized language of the life sciences industry. Glossary categories include:
- Regulatory & Compliance Terminology (EMA, FDA, PMDA-aligned)
- Clinical Trial & Research Terms (protocols, informed consent, study reports)
- Drug & Labeling Terminology (SmPC, PI, IFU, carton text)
- Medical Device Terminology (UDI, risk classification, component names)
- Patient-Facing Glossaries (health literacy and readability optimized)
- Multilingual Terminology Sets (validated in-market by native-speaking experts)
Custom Glossary Creation Services
Sesen partners with clients to develop tailored glossaries for specific therapeutic areas, product portfolios, or internal branding requirements. Our linguists and subject matter experts work collaboratively with your team to:
- Extract and validate client-preferred terminology
- Align with proprietary content management systems
- Maintain version control across projects and markets
- Incorporate Do-Not-Translate lists and context-specific usage
Custom glossaries are integrated directly into our translation workflows and QA processes, ensuring consistent use across all content types and delivery channels.
Style Guides for Life Sciences Translation
A style guide is a structured reference document that outlines the linguistic rules and formatting standards used to maintain uniformity across all translated content. In life sciences, this includes specifications for tone, grammar, punctuation, regional spelling conventions, units of measure, and terminology treatment. Style guides also define whether product names and brand terms should be translated or left in the source language, how to handle currencies and symbols, and the appropriate formatting for dates, times, and numerals in each locale. Sesen’s style guides are tailored to the unique demands of medical, regulatory, and patient-facing communication, helping ensure clarity, consistency, and compliance across multilingual content.
How Style Guides Support Life Sciences Communication
Style guides are essential tools for maintaining linguistic integrity in regulated and high-stakes environments. They support effective communication by:
- Promoting clarity and professionalism across clinical, scientific, and consumer-facing materials
- Enhancing readability for healthcare professionals, regulatory reviewers, and patients
- Supporting localization accuracy through culturally and linguistically appropriate usage
- Ensuring brand voice and tone consistency across diverse content types and markets
- Reducing revision cycles and inconsistencies, accelerating project timelines and quality review
Components of a Sesen Style Guide
Sesen develops comprehensive, modular style guides that are customized for each client’s needs and use cases. Typical components include:
- Tone & Voice Guidelines – Defines voice per content type (e.g., formal for clinical trials, accessible for patient education)
- Formatting Rules – Standards for structuring content such as headings, tables, bullet points, and data presentation
- Units of Measurement – Specifies whether to use metric or imperial units depending on the target market
- Language Preferences – Regional spelling and vocabulary (e.g., U.S. English vs. U.K. English, Canadian French vs. EU French)
- Date, Time & Number Formats – Locale-specific formatting conventions (e.g., 12/31/2025 vs. 31.12.2025)
- Capitalization & Abbreviation Rules – Consistency in the use of acronyms, scientific terms, and medical short forms
- Product & Brand Name Treatment – Instructions on translatability of proprietary names or trademarks
- Currency Formatting – How to represent monetary values in localized content
- Do-Not-Translate Lists – Terms that must remain in the source language for brand, regulatory, or scientific reasons
Therapeutic Area–Specific Style Guides
Sesen creates dedicated style guides for different therapeutic domains to address the linguistic and regulatory nuances unique to each. These include:
- Oncology
- Rare and Orphan Diseases
- Infectious Diseases
- Cardiovascular and Metabolic Disorders
- Neurology, Immunology, Pulmonology, and more
Each guide incorporates specialized terminology, tone adaptations, and content structure conventions relevant to that area of medicine.
Language-Specific Style Guides
To support accurate localization, Sesen maintains language-specific style guides that reflect regional preferences and compliance expectations. Available for:
- Spanish – Latin America and Spain
- French – France and Canada
- German
- Chinese – Simplified and Traditional
- Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Italian, and additional languages on request
These guides are developed and reviewed in collaboration with native-speaking linguists and life sciences experts to ensure linguistic accuracy and market suitability.
Seamless Integration with Translation Workflows
At Sesen, glossaries and style guides are embedded directly into our end-to-end translation workflows to drive consistency, accuracy, and efficiency across multilingual content production. These linguistic assets are centrally managed within our Translation Management System (TMS), enabling real-time access for linguists, reviewers, and project managers at every stage of the localization process.
TMS and QA Workflow Integration
Sesen’s TMS integrates client-specific glossaries and style guides into each project’s setup. Linguists are prompted with approved terminology and formatting standards during translation, while built-in quality assurance checks validate adherence during review. This ensures that all deliverables reflect client expectations and regulatory requirements without manual intervention.
Support for Industry-Standard Tools
Our system supports all major computer-assisted translation (CAT) tools and terminology platforms, including:
- Stepes TMS Cloud
- SDL Trados/MultiTerm
- memoQ Term Bases (TBs)
- XTM Cloud
- Phrase (formerly Memsource)
- Smartling, Wordfast, and others
These tools are configured to automatically reference centralized glossaries and enforce style guide rules, ensuring consistency across large-scale and multi-market projects.
Application in MTPE and Hybrid Workflows
In Machine Translation Post-Editing (MTPE) and hybrid translation models, pre-approved glossaries and style guides play a critical role. They guide human reviewers in validating and refining machine-generated output, reducing the risk of errors and stylistic inconsistencies. Sesen’s workflow ensures that linguists correct deviations based on client-specific standards, rather than arbitrary preferences.
Terminology Governance and Version Control
All linguistic assets are version-controlled and updated regularly in coordination with client stakeholders. Updates are synchronized across active projects to maintain alignment and minimize disruptions.
Collaboration and Customization
At Sesen, we take a collaborative approach to developing and maintaining glossaries and style guides, ensuring that each resource reflects the client’s subject matter expertise, internal standards, and regulatory requirements. These linguistic assets are not static documents—they evolve in step with product lifecycles, therapeutic areas, and market expansions.
Client and SME Collaboration
Glossaries and style guides are developed in close partnership with client-side reviewers, in-country experts, and subject matter specialists. Through terminology alignment sessions, linguistic reviews, and feedback loops, we ensure that approved terminology and tone accurately reflect each organization’s scientific language, brand voice, and risk profile.
- SME validation for high-impact content
- Review cycles to align on tone, clarity, and regulatory compliance
- Collaborative onboarding kits for new product lines or therapeutic areas
Update Protocols and Version Control
Sesen follows industry best practices for version control and change tracking. Updates to glossaries and style guides are documented, validated, and time-stamped to maintain linguistic integrity across projects and regulatory filings.
- Controlled versioning and centralized access
- Change logs for terminology and style decisions
- Synchronization with project milestones and review cycles
System Integration and Content Connectivity
Our glossaries and style guides can be integrated with client-side content ecosystems, including content management systems (CMS), document repositories, and regulatory publishing tools. This connectivity enables seamless reference during authoring, translation, and final QA, ensuring consistent use of approved language across global documentation.
- API-based integration with CMS and TMS platforms
- Structured file formats (e.g., TBX, XML, XLSX) for flexible interoperability
- Support for linking terminology with structured content frameworks (e.g., SPL, QRD templates)
Download or Request Linguistic Resources
Sesen offers curated linguistic assets to support organizations seeking to elevate the quality and consistency of their life sciences translations. Whether you’re evaluating our capabilities or ready to integrate with our workflows, we provide convenient access to sample glossaries, style guides, and onboarding resources to streamline collaboration.
Access Sample Glossaries and Style Guides
Explore a selection of sample resources that illustrate our approach to terminology management and content standardization:
- Multilingual Regulatory Glossary (Sample) – Includes commonly translated EMA and FDA terms
- Clinical Trial Style Guide (Excerpt) – Covers tone, structure, and formatting for ICFs and protocols
- Patient Communication Terminology List – Health literacy-aligned terms for multilingual outreach
Note: Some resources are gated. A valid business email and industry affiliation may be required for access.
Request Custom Resources
For clients seeking tailored support, Sesen offers personalized linguistic assets designed to meet the specific needs of your therapeutic area, brand, and content strategy.
Use the request form to:
- Request a custom glossary aligned with your internal terminology and product portfolio
- Initiate a therapeutic-area style guide development project (e.g., oncology, rare diseases)
- Access localization onboarding kits to streamline translator briefings, QA reviews, and terminology alignment
Our team will respond within one business day to schedule a discovery session or provide immediate access to applicable materials.
Frequently Asked Questions
How often are glossaries and style guides updated?
Glossaries and style guides are living resources that are updated on an ongoing basis. At Sesen, updates are made in alignment with project cycles, product releases, regulatory changes, and client feedback. We recommend quarterly reviews for active accounts, with additional updates triggered by terminology additions, therapeutic area expansions, or feedback from in-country reviewers.
Can clients submit their own glossaries?
Yes. Clients are encouraged to provide existing glossaries, preferred terminology lists, or brand language assets. Our linguistic team will validate, normalize, and integrate client-supplied glossaries into our TMS to ensure alignment across all translation workflows. We can also merge existing glossaries with newly developed terminology to create a unified, structured database.
How do glossaries and style guides affect turnaround time and quality?
Yes. Sesen’s glossaries and style guides are available in interoperable formats such as TBX, XLSX, and XML, and can be integrated into most major content management systems (CMS), document repositories, and regulatory authoring tools. We also support synchronization with CAT tools and terminology platforms commonly used by global life sciences organizations.
Are these resources compatible with our internal systems?
Absolutely. Our AI-powered translation workflows are designed for speed and scalability, allowing us to support urgent clinical trial submissions, protocol amendments, and safety updates. Our 24/7 global team and flexible engagement models allow for accelerated turnaround without sacrificing quality or regulatory compliance.
Related Resources
Learn how effective terminology and style guide management contributes to success in life sciences localization. Explore expert insights, proven best practices, and real-world applications in the resources below.
Blog: Terminology Management in Life Sciences
Discover why consistent terminology is critical in regulatory, clinical, and commercial content. Learn how structured glossaries improve translation accuracy, reduce compliance risks, and scale efficiently across global markets.
LEARN MORE
White Paper: Regulatory Translation Best Practices
Gain insight into proven strategies for managing multilingual submissions, including terminology validation, source content standardization, and QA workflows. Ideal for RA, QA, and localization teams navigating global health authority requirements.
Case Study: Terminology-Driven Success in Multilingual Submissions
See how one global biotech company reduced review time by 30% and improved approval rates using a centralized glossary strategy. This case study highlights the real-world impact of terminology control in high-stakes regulatory content.
VIEW THE CASE STUDYI
