Three Senses of “Secure” in a Pump IFU
Nordhaven Medical is preparing the Spanish and Mexican Spanish versions of the HomeGlide infusion pump instructions for use. The source string “secure the line” appears in step 4, “secure the reservoir” in step 7, and “secure the patient’s consent” in a training slide. The translation vendor rendered all three with forms of asegurar. A native clinical reviewer objects: in her reading, asegurar means “to guarantee,” which could tell a nurse that the line is guaranteed rather than fastened. The regulatory glossary lists fijar for physical fastening, but step 7 also involves closing a latch, and the vendor argues fijar sounds mechanical. Launch is in nine days; re-translating the full document is not possible, but the team can edit three strings and add translator notes. A second reviewer suggests sujete for step 4 and confirme for consent, but the glossary has no entry for sujete. The project lead must decide the renderings and prevent the same sense collapse from recurring in the next product.
1. Classify the three occurrences of “secure” by sense and recommend a rendering for each. Explain the evidence you would use, not just the final word.
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The three occurrences are not one meaning. Step 4 is a physical fastening sense: the object is a line, the action is preventing movement, and the likely collocation is fijar la línea or sujetar la línea. Step 7 is also physical, but the object is a reservoir plus a latch, so the action includes closing and locking; fijar may be acceptable for the fastening, but the instruction may need a second verb such as cierre to cover the latch. Consent is abstract: the sense is obtain or confirm, so obtener or confirmar el consentimiento is appropriate; asegurar is wrong because it suggests guaranteeing consent rather than obtaining it.
The evidence is selectional: physical objects such as line and reservoir take fastening verbs, while abstract objects such as consent take obtain/confirm verbs. Glossary consistency matters, but it cannot override a sense mismatch. My recommendation is fije/sujete la línea, fije el reservorio y cierre el pestillo, and obtenga/confirme el consentimiento, with a translator note explaining why the single rendering failed.
2. The vendor says fijar sounds too mechanical for a latch. How should the lead weigh glossary consistency against naturalness in a regulated instruction?
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The lead should treat this as a safety-critical register decision, not a style preference. In an IFU, the reader must perform the action correctly the first time; a word that sounds slightly mechanical is less dangerous than a word that suggests a guarantee. Glossary terms are also audit evidence: an unexplained deviation can trigger a regulatory query. So the default is to keep fijar for the fastening action and, where the latch needs an extra step, add a plain verb rather than replace the glossary term.
Naturalness still matters, but it should be handled at the phrase level: fije el reservorio y asegúrese de que el pestillo encaje keeps the approved term and clarifies the latch without introducing an unapproved synonym for the core action. The lead should document the deviation for sujete if it is used, record the rationale, and flag the term for the next glossary review. If the vendor insists on a non-glossary verb for the latch, the lead should reject it unless the clinical reviewer and regulatory affairs both sign off in writing.
3. Propose a fix that fits the nine-day window and reduces the chance that the same problem recurs in the next product.
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A full re-translation is neither possible nor necessary. Within nine days, the team can do three things. First, edit only the three affected strings, using the sense-based renderings and a short translator note in each segment. Second, add sense IDs to the termbase entry for secure: physical fastening, obtain/confirm, and protect against access. The entry should include object types and example collocations, because translators need selectional cues, not just a list of synonyms. Third, run a quick query across the next product’s source files for the same verb with abstract objects such as consent, approval, and access; those are the likely recurrent mismatches.
This is a containment strategy, not a complete quality fix. The lead should also schedule a post-launch review of the three strings with the native reviewer, record whether nurses misread them in usability testing, and add a pre-translation sense-disambiguation step for safety-critical verbs. That gives the team a defensible short-term fix and a process change that addresses the cause.