Building a multilingual EU regulatory glossary: a case study

For a recent project, we localized medical documentation with strict regulatory terminology requirements. But how do you keep terminology consistent when there’s no glossary to follow?

The task: Localize 30,000 words from manuals and supporting materials for neuromonitoring equipment into Bulgarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, and Serbian Latin.

The challenge: We had to follow required terminology in the EU Medical Device Regulation (MDR), but there was no ready-made glossary. The client asked us to identify relevant terms in the English MDR and match them with their equivalents in each target language version. For some languages, we first had to find the official translated regulatory documents.

Our workflow: The team built a process focused on creating and applying a reliable multilingual terminology base:

1. Researched and located the required MDR documents for the missing languages
2. Used an AI-assisted process to identify relevant terminology in the English MDR and match English terms with their equivalents in each target language
3. Built multilingual working glossaries covering all target languages  
4. Applied the glossaries throughout localization and QA checks to ensure terminology consistency  
5. Had native linguists verify terminology as well as every issue flagged during QA

The result: Localized files were delivered with consistent, MDR-aligned terminology across all languages. The client’s review returned just two minor terminology preferences.

If your project comes with regulated terminology but no ready glossary, consistency across languages is still achievable. Building a glossary from the right reference materials before terminology spreads across thousands of translated words can reduce the number of corrections later and make the process more efficient.

If you have terminology-heavy projects without a glossary, we’ll help you build one and ensure consistency.