Everyone has probably seen unintentionally comically translated instructions. Nevertheless, it is important and, in the case of safety data sheets, even mandatory that these documents are translated into the official language of the recipient country. Particularly in the case of safety data sheets, there are also fixed terms such as the signal word or the designation of a hazard class. How do companies with internationally sold products still manage to provide the safety data sheets correctly translated?
Scope of safety data sheets (SDS)
With 16 sections, an SDS is no lightweight in terms of scope. Each section deals with a specific topic, such as physico-chemical hazards or dangerous goods information. It is pages and pages of information, often with legally defined terms and references.
SDSs are rarely less than 10-12 pages and can be well over 20 pages, especially when it comes to substances with exposure scenarios. For contract manufacturers, this means regularly producing new safety data sheets for different raw materials, and not just in one language. There are also grammatical differences that lead to a completely different sentence structure in some languages.
The solution: translation in parts
The most important thing to enable fast translations is to use sentences and parts of sentences for which the translations are already known. The entire safety data sheet therefore does not consist of a single translation, which would have to be carried out again for each new SDS, but of many small sentences or parts of sentences, in short phrases, which have already been translated. The safety data sheet is then compiled from these phrases and no longer requires a complete translation.
This makes it possible to quickly provide a new language, as the individual translations are already known. If you have already received several different safety data sheets from a manufacturer, you will often notice that the sentences are similar – this not only helps with the translation but also with comprehensibility.
When which phrases are used can theoretically be put together manually. For larger quantities of SDSs, however, specialized programs are used that suggest suitable phrases based on known information such as the hazard and classification of the product – rules that can often be expanded to meet individual requirements. GeSi³ also works with its own phrase system and already suggests a large part of the SDS content based on the known formulation data. Only in this way is it possible for larger manufacturers to provide the number of SDSs in multiple languages that are mandatory for the sale of products.
