Host Karen Tkaczyk welcomes a guest who brings a vital but often underappreciated perspective to the life sciences ecosystem on this episode of the Life Sciences – In Focus Podcast. Ana Sofía Correia is a freelance medical translator and writer, as well as a medical translation mentor, with nearly two decades of experience working at the intersection of language, medicine, and patient communication.
This episode marked a first for the podcast: a dedicated conversation with a linguist, and it quickly became clear why this voice matters.
From Linguist to Life Sciences Expert
Ana’s professional journey is both deliberate and deeply grounded. She has worked as a freelancer since 2007, specializing in medical translation from the outset. Alongside her freelance work, she spent 12 years as an in-house translator in academic and healthcare institutions in Portugal, including a social sciences research center and a nursing school. That experience gave her more than subject knowledge; it immersed her in the development, review, and preparation of medical and scientific content for publication.
In 2018, Ana transitioned fully into freelance work, a move aligned with both her long-term professional goals and a new chapter in her personal life. Since then, her scope has expanded well beyond traditional translation. Today, she works across medical translation, medical writing, editing, localization, transcreation, and linguistic validation for patient-reported outcomes in clinical research.
What emerges from her story is a portrait of a professional who understands not only language but the entire communication lifecycle in life sciences.
The Breadth of a Life Sciences Linguist’s Work
Ana offered a clear and practical breakdown of the kinds of materials life sciences linguists handle, dividing them into regulatory and non-regulatory content.
On the regulatory side, her work includes clinical trial documentation, such as informed consent forms, patient information sheets, and protocols, as well as core regulatory materials, such as summaries of product characteristics and patient information leaflets, submitted to the European Medicines Agency. She also works extensively with medical device content, including instructions for use and labeling.
On the non-regulatory side, Ana focuses much of her medical writing on patient education materials, healthcare professional training, and awareness campaigns. These materials may be developed from scratch in English or localized downstream into Portuguese. While non-regulatory, they still demand precision, clarity, and deep respect for the audience.
Her explanation underscored an important truth: life sciences linguists are not working at the margins. They are embedded across therapeutic areas, audiences, and stages of development.
Subject Matter Expertise Without a Clinical Degree
A recurring theme in the episode was the nature of expertise. Ana is not a clinician, yet she is undeniably a subject matter expert. She described this expertise as cumulative, built over years of exposure to hundreds of projects, therapeutic areas, document types, and stakeholders.
Her approach to professional development is intentional. She invests time in research for every project, attends industry events to understand how sponsors, CROs, regulators, medical writers, and patients think and communicate, and continually expands her domain knowledge.
Importantly, she distinguishes between being a medical expert and being an expert in medical communication.
Her role is to ensure that complex medical information is clear, consistent, usable, and appropriate for its intended audience. That, she argues, is subject matter expertise in its own right.
Passion Rooted in Access and Fairness
When asked what sustains her passion after so many years, Ana’s answer was both personal and principled. Living with a chronic condition has made her acutely aware of how patients encounter and process health information. Professionally, this awareness translates into a strong commitment to access and fairness.
She spoke candidly about a persistent imbalance in global healthcare communication. English-language content often receives extensive attention, review, and refinement, while localized versions are sometimes treated as an afterthought. For Ana, this is not just a workflow issue; it is an ethical one.
Patients and clinicians who read Portuguese, Spanish, or any other language are not secondary audiences. They are making real decisions about treatment, consent, and daily care. They deserve the same clarity, usability, and respect as English-speaking audiences. This conviction sits at the heart of her work.
AI, Risk, and Responsible Use
No contemporary discussion of translation would be complete without addressing artificial intelligence. Ana offered a nuanced and pragmatic perspective grounded in risk analysis.
She observes a wide range of organizational responses, from outright bans on AI to cautious experimentation and, in some cases, rushed adoption driven by pressure to move faster. The key, she emphasized, is understanding risk.
For high-risk content that directly affects patient safety, consent, or confidentiality, tolerance for error must be effectively zero. Errors introduced at the source level can multiply dramatically when propagated through AI-driven translation workflows.
For lower-risk content, such as internal drafts or early-stage materials, AI may offer efficiencies, but only with informed human oversight. Ana noted that when AI is used without proper risk assessment, linguists are often brought in later for repair work, mitigating issues that could have been avoided with better planning.
Her message was clear: linguists are not obstacles to innovation. They are essential advisors in building responsible, effective workflows.
Bringing Language in Earlier
Ana shared a final piece of advice that resonated strongly. Language professionals should not be treated as the final step in the process. Bringing translators, editors, and localization experts in earlier allows them to advise on structure, clarity, and usability while the content is still being shaped.
This early involvement leads to smoother workflows, higher-quality outputs, and fewer downstream problems. It reframes language not as a mechanical task, but as a strategic component of life sciences communication.
About Life Sciences – In Focus
Life Sciences – In Focus Podcast by Visatatec, a fascinating conversation with global life sciences experts. The show has multiple hosts and topics. Follow Life Sciences – In Focus on Spotify for all the latest episodes, or subscribe to the show on YouTube and Apple podcasts. Life Sciences – In Focus is available on many other podcast platforms. To learn more about the podcast, please visit https://vistatec.com/life-sciences-division.
About Vistatec
We have been helping some of the world’s most iconic brands to optimize their global commercial potential since 1997. Vistatec is one of the world’s leading global content solutions providers. HQ in Dublin, Ireland, with offices in Mountain View, California, USA. To learn more about Vistatec, please visit https://www.vistatec.com
