About the office · Doc. HV-ABT · Rev. D
A manual that reads as if your engineers wrote it in Lyon, São Paulo and Łódź.
Hollingsworth & Vance is one office at 2900 Lamontville Road. It translates three kinds of document — instructions for use, regulatory submissions and interface strings — for device manufacturers selling into the EU and Latin America. This page covers how the office is set up, the rules it keeps, and the work it sends elsewhere.
Every document we touch carries a revision letter. This page is at D. The table to the right says so.
- Read twice before release
- Twelve target languages
- One office, Decatur, TN
- Invoiced after review
§01 — Revision history
Four revisions, each made for a stated reason.
A device manual carries a revision table at the back, so a regulator can see what changed and why. The office keeps one too. It leaves out the dates, because the reasons explain more than the years would.
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Revision A: Initial release: one rule
The office opened on a single condition rather than a specialty: nobody approves their own translation. Every file is read by the person who wrote it and then by a second certified linguist who did not. That condition has not been revised since.
Reason for changeNone. Initial release.
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Revision B: Scope narrowed to medical devices
We stopped quoting brochures, menus and wine labels. The vocabulary of a sterile barrier system does not share a glossary well with tasting notes, and a reviewer who reads infusion-set IFUs all week catches things a generalist reads straight past.
Reason for changeTwo glossaries were one too many.
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Revision C: Software strings added
Devices started shipping with touchscreens. The German manual said one word for “Start”; the German button said another. We now translate the interface and the IFU against each other, so the instruction and the screen agree on every label.
Reason for changeThe manual and the screen must use the same word.
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Revision D: Latin America added; Portugal split from Brazil Current
ANVISA, COFEPRIS, INVIMA and ANMAT readers joined the notified bodies on our list. Brazilian and European Portuguese became two separate files with two separate reviewers, which is how the twelve languages came to be twelve rather than eleven.
Reason for changeEcrã ≠ tela.
§02 — House style guide
Six of the forty-one rules every linguist signs before the first sentence.
Translators work to the guide. Reviewers check against it line by line. These six are the ones procurement teams tend to ask about, so here they are without the footnotes.
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Rule01
A dosage is never rounded.
0.25 mg stays 0.25 mg — written 0,25 mg wherever the target language uses a decimal comma, and not otherwise touched.
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Rule04
Warnings are translated first.
While the translator is freshest. Then they are reviewed first, for the same reason.
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Rule09
Units stay in the units your engineers wrote.
37 °C does not become 98.6 °F, and 500 mL does not become 16.9 fl oz, unless you ask for it in writing.
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Rule22
An ambiguous source sentence gets a question, not a guess.
We email the query with the line number. The clock on that sentence stops until you answer.
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Rule30
Abbreviations in a warning are spelled out.
Even when the box on the carton is small. We tell you the box is small. We do not make the warning smaller.
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Rule41
Rule 1 overrides rules 2 through 40.
It was written so that nobody on a deadline ever has to argue about it.
§03 — Sign-off
Four boxes on every certificate. Boxes one and two never carry the same name.
A certificate of accuracy from this office is one page per language: the file, its revision, the target language and the four people below. If a regulator asks who checked the Greek, the answer is already printed on the page.
Box 1 — Translated by
A native linguist of the target language
Signature, translator
- Certified, with medical device subject experience
- Works from your glossary, not from memory
- Copies every number; never retypes one
Box 2 — Reviewed by
A second certified linguist
Signature, reviewer
- Never the translator of the same file
- Reads sentence by sentence against the source
- Logs every disagreement; the log comes to you
Box 3 — Typeset by
Layout, back in your original file
Signature, typesetter
- InDesign, FrameMaker or Word — whichever arrived
- Háčeks and Greek checked in the embedded font
- Proofed as a printed PDF, not only on screen
Box 4 — Released by
The project lead on Lamontville Road
Signature, release
- File count matches your purchase order
- Names in boxes 1 and 2 checked as different
- The invoice is the last file in the folder
The certificate
One per language, and what another copy costs.
Each delivery includes a signed certificate for every target language. If a second regulator wants its own — ANVISA and a notified body for the same device, say — we reissue it with that authority named on the page.
The translation memory built during your project comes with the files. It is yours. Take it to the next agency if you like; it will make their quote smaller.
§04 — Why East Tennessee
9:00am on Lamontville Road is 3:00pm in Frankfurt and 10:00am in São Paulo.
The office keeps Eastern time, which sits usefully between its two markets. European reviewers get the first half of our day, during their afternoon. Latin American reviewers get nearly all of it. A German regulator’s question sent at 3pm their time is answered the same day.
- Decatur, TN 9:00am The office opens
- Frankfurt 3:00pm de-DE reviewers
- Warsaw 3:00pm pl-PL reviewers
- Lisbon 2:00pm pt-PT reviewers
- São Paulo 10:00am pt-BR · ANVISA
- Buenos Aires 10:00am es-AR · ANMAT
- Bogotá 8:00am es-CO · INVIMA
- Mexico City 7:00am es-MX · COFEPRIS
Times correct for 18 October 2026. Europe sets its clocks back on 25 October; the United States follows on 1 November. For that one week, every schedule we send carries a footnote saying so.
§05 — Declined, politely
Five kinds of job we turn down, and who to call instead.
Saying no to these is how the yes stays reliable. If your file is on this list, the reason is not the budget.
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N.01
Declined: Contracts and patents
Different vocabulary, different liability. Call a sworn legal translator, ideally one admitted in the country the contract is governed by.
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N.02
Declined: Marketing taglines
A tagline needs someone who writes slogans in that market, not a reviewer holding a glossary. Call an in-market copywriter. We will happily translate the IFU that ships in the same box.
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N.03
Declined: A thirteenth language
Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Turkish. We would rather say no than send your file to a reviewer we have never sat next to. Ask us for a referral and we will tell you who we would call.
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N.04
Declined: Regulatory files due tomorrow
The second reader needs time to disagree with the first. A 4,000-word IFU takes seven working days per language. Call us the day the launch date is set, not the day before it.
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N.05
Declined: Machine output, “just tidied”
On instructions for use and submissions, we translate from the source. On software strings, a machine draft is possible if you ask in writing — and both linguists still read every segment.