🔒Corporate Translations caters to employee needs

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Corporate Translations speaks your language, literally.

The East Hartford company translates drug and patient information for pharmaceutical companies testing and marketing their drugs worldwide, providing wording for the companies, patients, regulators and medical professionals that has to be precise and linguistically accurate.

“The large portion of the documentation that we translate is while the drug is being tested on humans,” says Jill Balcerzak, director of organizational development and quality for Corporate Translations, which translates exclusively for the life-sciences industry.

When a pharmaceutical company, or a clinical research organization working on its behalf, conducts drug trials around the world, it will call on Corporate Translations to translate drug information into precise language used by patients and doctors testing the drug. They translate drug information, instructions, patient consent forms and even resumes of doctors seeking to participate in the trials and the advertising used to recruit patients.

Trial results then need to be translated from that native language, if it's a U.S. company that's testing, back into English for the company and regulators here to evaluate. If a document is translated into Russian, for example, it may be retranslated back into English for what's called linguistic reconciliation, Balcerzak says.

When the drug is approved, Corporate Translations will then translate all of the marketing, advertising, labeling and patient information sheets for the drug.

“There's so much more that goes into this than anybody can possibly imagine,” Balcerzak says.

Corporate Translations is the preferred vendor for more than 25 pharmaceutical companies and their clinical research organizations, including the world's leading pharmaceutical companies, she says. It translates in more than 100 languages, using more than 1,500 freelance linguists around the world whose work is carefully checked locally. It's critical work — that literally can mean life or death — and pharmaceutical companies are investing heavily in trials based on information that needs to be accurate.

“One of the things we think is very important is to make sure that we properly invest in our training and so we have a very robust training curriculum to ensure that people feel confident and competent in their role as quickly as possible,” Balcerzak says.

“That ultimately leads to a portion of our employee satisfaction, but it also leads to our retention — we have a very high retention rate here,” she says.

The company's annual turnover ratio last year was 8.75 percent.

The 130 employees locally include client service coordinators who solicit translation requests from pharmaceutical clients, determining the best way to do a translation and quoting translation price and turnaround time; employees who monitor translators and their work quality; desktop publishers who convert the translation into the required source document; and quality assurance editors who perform final quality control edits on projects and ensure all steps and client requirements were met.

The company also has offices in Chicago, Japan and Turkey.

In addition to focusing on training, Corporate Translations is competitive with its employee benefits program, beyond typical healthcare coverage, Balcerzak says.

“We do work very closely with our staff members to afford them the work-life balance that they need,” including offering flexible schedules and eight work-from-home days, she says.

The company conducts health and wellness events throughout the year, bringing in everyone from nutritionists to talk about diet to masseurs to conduct in-office chair massages.

The company also will pay for employees' entry fees in events like 10-K runs and marathons, triathlons, bike races, walks and other events.

It offers college tuition reimbursement for courses as part of personal development plans to further employees' expertise.

“We also have a number of very impressive employee events throughout the year just to get different people together,” including a fully catered annual summer picnic and “a very well-orchestrated holiday party,” Balcerzak says.

“I think this company is tremendously flexible in working with people,” she says of the business founded Mary Gawlicki. Gawlicki is the president and her husband, Ted, is vice president and works primarily in business development.

“They really do run the organization like a family and so they're very committed and they're very involved in the growth and development of not only the company but of each individual staff member,” Balcerzak says. “Their presence in the organization makes the company what it is.”

Dennis Binkowski, Corporate Translations' quality assurance services team lead, benefited from that commitment, getting his MBA this spring at the University of Hartford with tuition assistance from the company. That was a great help, he says.

The company also supported him with schedule flexibility as he went through the MBA program, he says.

“They really want you to be successful and hit your personal goals,” says Binkowski, who has been with the company since 2010.

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