Uncategorized Archives - The Department

Project Management Made Easy – Brief Handbook for Freelace Translators

Cristina Tohanean — Fri, 24 Mar 2023 13:40:33 +0000

Efficient project management for your translation projects.

Before the pandemic started I had the amazing opportunity to share my thoughts about project management in the translation industry in front of an elite public, freelance translators interested in growing and expanding their horizon and professional network in the translation industry. The event was hosted in Cluj by TranslateCluj, and I had to speak in front of a large number of translators about this industry.

I initially felt as an impostor, as I am not a translator. I have no superior linguistic studies. However, here I was, standing in front of them, being passionate about this industry for 12 years back then and 15 years today. But I like to think that we do not sell translations, but project management services.

What started out as a side business introduced to me by my high school colleague soon became my baby. The Department was born out of my desire to do things my own way. With a great team on my side, the transition was smooth. We practically grew up together and continued our path guided by the same values, all respect-oriented. Even if it sounds cheesy, if you don’t value and respect yourself, no one else will.

More simply said, it does not all revolve around earnings and checking a task off your list. It’s about the process and how you manage to handle everything. Our approach paid off during the past years: most of our clients have chosen us following a recommendation they received, and they choose us over and over again due to the good professional relationship that we have.

During my experience as a people manager, project manager or business owner, I had the chance to experience first-hand what are the benefits of simply being respectful with the people you work with.

It all goes beyond costs and deadlines. At the end of the day, it all comes down to being happy about how you managed to do your job, the relationships that you build and doing something meaningful. I always go by the saying: Treat others how you want to be treated.

This is how my presentation on project management for translators looked like – not as pretty as the actual Power Point slides, but containing the same highlights:

Don’t forget to respect:
• yourselves
• your business
• the people your work with
• your clients

If you don’t value and respect yourself wholeheartedly, no one else will either.

Freelancing means…

being a translator
being a business owner
being an all-in-one employee: doing the books, handling your contracts, dealing with late payments, IT issues and all the rest.

Being a project manager, in fact.
Whether you realize it or not.

While drafting the slides for this presentation on project management in the translation industry, I took some time to talk to a few translators to have their input on what the ideal PM would look like.

As you might notice, the wishes that the PM and the translator seem to have overlap quite a bit. I am curious how would you continue the list that I started earlier. Let’s see. We have the following so far: treat us as equals, be proactive, offer support and don’t be pushy.

What boxes do you have to tick as a PM-Translator?

be competent, with technical expertise;
be organized;
be proactive and a multitasker;
be cool under pressure;
be flexible and creative;
be a great communicator;
meet the deadlines.

Aside from translating, remember that you:

drive sales;
manage contacts and contracts with clients;
draft quotes and follow-up with potential jobs;
prepare the projects for translation for end-clients;
keep your terminology resources up to date;
issue invoices and follow-up on payments.

Your time-management skills must be sky high in order to deal with everything in a professional manner.

Speaking of time management, take advantage of all the resources you can find, such as:

Tasks management – Trello;
Storage and remote access – Google Drive/Dropbox;
E-mail – Outlook;
OCR – Abby Fine Reader;
CAT Tools: SDL Trados or other free (online) tools;
Terminology: iate, Microsoft Language Portal, Linguee;
QA Tool – Verifika/XBench;
Project Management – Wordbee (CAT Tool included);
TranslateTools+– includes a tool to remove unwanted tags from documents.

It might not seem such a difficult job writing an e-mail. But it is. And doing it just right, choosing the right tone, what to point out, what’s the perfect length it should have, if it serves its purpose. Or quite the opposite.

It might seem basic, but some of our main challenges while training junior project managers were to make them see the big picture and properly addressing something. Be it an e-mail, a phone call, a request sent out to a fellow colleague or translator.

Keep in mind these simple steps for an efficient management of your translation projects:

reply to the requests in a timely and professional manner;
perform a volume and time frame analysis before accepting a project;
make sure you have a PO/payment/contract for the job;
request clarifications or instructions;
prepare the files for translation;
translate and proofread;
run a QA;
perform the final touches on the layout and deliver on time;
update the Translation Memory;
make sure you issue the invoice and follow-up the payment;
have a clear overview on your projects until they are closed (delivered and paid).

And remember: You already have a superpower. Babies can’t be delivered in one-month, whatever project managers will tell you.
Don’t be afraid to sometimes say NO.

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We have a small collection of articles on our blog for your breaks from lists and work instruments. Two of these are on literary translations and creative writing – you can find them here.

Published on: 24.03.2023

The post Project Management Made Easy – Brief Handbook for Freelace Translators appeared first on The Department.

ELENA SANDU •• Junior Translator •• Translation as a profession – will it be replaced by technology?

Cristina Tohanean — Wed, 22 Mar 2023 11:28:15 +0000

TRANSLATION AS A PROFESSION– WILL IT BE REPLACED BY TECHNOLOGY?

We are perhaps witnessing the greatest period for humanity of all times in terms of life quality, currently benefiting from advantages that make our lives easier, concepts that people from decades ago could not even think about.

Technology and the translator: technology has reached a point where it can be considered a real ally in the work of many of us, no matter the field, if used properly. The most pertinent consequence of the evolution of technology is the impact it has on our daily lives. From household appliances to means of communication, AI has made our work easier and led to new findings. People have researched and invented devices to help them and, in some cases, they ended up being replaced by their own discoveries.

Thus, this is not the first time in history when human input is put at risk in many professions. Fortunately, humanity has a great ability to adapt and often overcame lots of major changes: from drivers replaced by self-driving cars to cashiers replaced by self-scanning cash registers. These changes make us wonder about the translation field as well. As we are always open to research and evolution, we want to weight up some key factors through an antithesis between two forces designed to support each other – man and technology or translator and artificial intelligence – and we are about to draw a conclusion together at the end – or just raise more questions.

When it comes to the difference between seeing technology as a threat or as a helping tool, we choose to see it as a helping tool and here’s why:

Human abilities in the translation field

Reasoning

The primary human ability is the cognitive process or reasoning. The human mind has been in a constant battle with artificial intelligence. Robots are in some ways faster and more productive than the human brain, but these two functions are distinct, because AI does not perceive more than it possesses in its area of competence, making human assistance still essential. Along with the development of technology and globalization, the demand for translation services has grown considerably. Technology has also caused an acceleration of the deadlines for language localization, translation, and subtitling services, so we use professional software to provide fast and high quality translations. Among the main tools used by translators are CAT tools – computer-assisted translation tools, such as Trados Studio, Wordbee, Smartcat or Crowdin. By using translation memories and terminology databases to automatically generate repeating phrases and terms, we speed up the translation process.

Experience

As in all other fields, the translation field encounters unique situations, obstacles that artificial intelligence would identify as problems. Any professional translator will take the problem as a challenge to which it can find solutions through experience or even through his own mistakes.

Logic

One of the factors that can only be reproduced by the human mind is abstraction. The translator can perceive concepts at a much higher level because he is not limited by a template of algorithms imposed in advance. It is much safer to rely on a program when we have a technical translation, and among the best translation software is DeepL Translate. However, we cannot rely exclusively on software-generated translations. We all know that famous error that makes us check before handing over the final product to the client, where we would not have thought that such human “assistance” was needed. We are talking about a label for the famous dessert, Turkish delight, for which the translation was far from “Turkish delight”. That’s why we highlight the importance of proofreading services, and we are extremely careful about the quality of our translations.

Language as a human specific communication tool

By definition, language is the specific means of communication through which people express their thoughts and, more importantly, their feelings. Of all the translation fields, the literary translation is the one least exposed to the danger of the expansion of digitalization, because this field comprises a human part that artificial intelligence lacks. A valuable literary translation is one made with human empathy, in such a way that the message of the literary text, poem or any creative writing is mirrored in the target language. The translator’s voice has almost the same impact as the writer’s because his mission is to culturally adapt and spread the message around the world, while taking into consideration all the specifics the author relied on when writing it. For more information on literary translation, we recommend our articles: Mircea Pricăjan •• Author and translator and Simina Popa •• Translator of Portuguese Literature.
Also, a significant side of artistic translations is represented by subtitling. Subtitles contain cultural information and locale that cannot be simply expressed by a machine or by person speaking a foreign language, because the contribution of a native speaker of the target language is essential to be able to provide the most authentic experience to the target audience.

The pragmatic approach

AI may encounter errors in the field of translations, especially in the subtitling industry, because it lacks a human-specific side of linguistics-pragmatics. While from the semantic point of view, a machine translation program could render the meaning of words because of human implementation, we cannot expect the same in the field of pragmatics. It is a component that you use every day without even noticing, and it is highly connected with the interpretation of language situations. Every sentence you utter has a motivation or an intention. These cannot be rendered by a software, because the machine is not able to perceive the affective state of the speaker. For example, in a speech, speakers may use humor or sarcasm, forms of expression that need to be carefully expressed in nuances through creativity. Also, the same sentence (e.g., “What a nice hat!”) can denote both a compliment or an irony, depending on the speaker’s intention. The translator may identify the nuances according to the pragmatic context through interpretation. Such linguistic nuances cannot be rendered by artificial intelligence. The context in which the dialogue takes place is significant because a translator takes into account the target audience, be it children, adults or people with hearing impairment.
The pragmatics branch is also essential in interpretation projects. We can better understand the importance of translators and interpreters in the current armed conflict. Nowadays, a word could mean the world, it can stop a real fight or the spread of misinformation that would create panic among population. If the fate of the whole country depended on a dialogue between two heads of state, would you rely on a specialist translator who is knowledgeable and in touch with reality or on software?

My conclusion

We think that the field is not endangered by AI, and translators and interpreters will continue to use these machine translation tools or translation memories to their and their clients’ advantage. For translators, technology is an aid to generate high quality translations in the shortest time possible. In such a dynamic world, we encourage translators to continually research new ways in which they can better the value of their work.

The profession of a translator is changing and evolving every day, and the people behind this title are in a continuous research and advance as technology evolves to provide quality translation services and a meaningful contribution to the world. If we haven’t yet convinced you of the importance of translators, we invite you to read the following article: “Machine Translation – Friend or Foe?”

You can find a few more blogposts here.

Date of publication: 22.03.2023

The post ELENA SANDU •• Junior Translator •• Translation as a profession – will it be replaced by technology? appeared first on The Department.

Partnership and customer care in the language industry

Cristina Tohanean — Thu, 12 Aug 2021 07:19:22 +0000

Why finding the right localization partner early on is vital to long-term success?

Providing services should come along with great customer care, and the language industry should be no exception, but an example of how communication should be at the very core of our training and business.

Relationship sells.

The best client is the one that you already have.

I am not much of a fan of sales trainings, but these two phrases stuck with me.

It’s not a coincidence that our motto is: “Not just a team of translators, but your translation department“. We built our business on this foundation, and it shows: 90% client retention and excellent relationships with all our clients.

If I were to make a list on what we have been doing for the past 13 years without having sales trainings or other sophisticated courses on business development, I would say these are some of our core beliefs:

Place customers at the center of everything you do;
Make customer services part of your brand’s DNA;
Don’t overpromise. Be honest and keep your word;
Be human. Avoid template-based communication;
Help customers help themselves – it might look like you are losing business, but you gain trust and respect for your expertise;
Be proactively helpful;
~~Our client, our boss.~~ Respect your client and make it about the partnership that you have;
Maintain your focus throughout your entire collaboration, not just until you obtain the customer;
Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and treat them as you would like to be treated;
Live their journey.

This is quite an introduction about how we managed to become a vital partner for the localization department of a global e-commerce platform supplier. What you need in a partner, and especially a localization partner, is for them to check as many boxes as they can from the above list, alongside with their expertise on translation and localization, of course.

We asked VTEX – global e-commerce platform supplier now NYSE-listed – to evaluate how we helped them in their rapid expansion, in our role of localization partner, and the reality check was even greater than we could’ve expected – it seems that our customer, when choosing the right partner, is also looking for the things we listed above.

VTEX’s global expansion: a localization perspective
Why finding the right partner early on is vital to long term success?

“VTEX, now a Brazilian unicorn NYSE-listed company and a leader in ecommerce solutions, started factoring in localization as it hit its first expansion roadblock in the US, where a native experience doesn’t entail a word-for-word translation of an interface, but rather comprises a comprehensive set of parameters that are unique to that regional target audience. Expanding into LATAM was one thing, this was a whole new ball game, and we needed to up the ante. At the same time, the first deals started coming in from Europe, with Romania, Italy, and Spain leading the way. An entirely new problem emerged for the first time, one that would increase in frequency as VTEX continuously expanded: none of the localization team members at that time (numbering a whopping 3 team members), spoke any Italian.

As Europe and the US became the new frontiers for the company, requests started flooding in, not just for localization into Spanish and English, but now also into Romanian and Italian. We urgently needed a partner, one that could work fast, with little notice, and understand what we needed even we weren’t so sure ourselves. After an exhaustive search which led nowhere, I was ready to give up on finding a global partner and instead try to work with smaller local ones where possible. During a weekly call with Cristi, then VTEX’s Romania country manager and now in charge of Eastern Europe, I expressed my frustration at not finding the partner I was looking for. His reaction was, “well, did you speak to Cristina from The Department?”. Which department is what crossed my mind, but then I understood. Cristina had worked with Cristi on a different project before, for another company, and as he put it, her company’s services were the best he’d seen.

Long story short, we partnered with them, and I’ve come to realize that it was one of those godsent moments that define a company’s long-term success. We’re a chaotic bunch, always racing against the incoming tide of an increasingly fast expansion, with localization being at the center of providing a native user experience, be it through a global setting or on a local user level. Our checkout module currently supports around 30 languages natively, and our admin is fully deployed in 7 languages; our blog posts and business case studies are published in 5-6 languages, and so on.

How can a team of 12 ever compete with the rest of the company, now at over 1300 strong? We can’t do it by ourselves, and here is where Cristina and her team come in. She is our localization project manager in all but her email address. She probably knows more about VTEX than most of our staff, and for a good reason, as she’s been personally managing and organizing all the requests that we cannot handle in-house.

Her team is dedicated, responds well to feedback, and most importantly, can deliver consistent quality in less than 24 hours. Together, we’ve launched Romanian and Japanese as full admin language options, have deployed our checkout front-end experience in more than 25 languages, and have overcome numerous challenges, from subtitling 50+ hours of training videos for LATAM partners to putting together a translation memory to training on the use of CAT tools. Finnish admin in a week? No problem. Arabic RTL layout expert? Sure. Korean UX changes for a native experience? All done.

Many of these things are not expected of a typical partner agency, but Cristina and her team have never let us down. We don’t consider them a partner; we consider them part of the team. If you’re looking for reliability and consistent quality at a moment’s notice, I would not recommend anyone else.”

Vladimir Montanu
Head of Localization at VTEX

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We have a small collection of articles on our blog, for your breaks from lists and work instruments. Two of these are on literary translations and creative writing – you can find them here.

Published on: 12.08.2021

The post Partnership and customer care in the language industry appeared first on The Department.

Thoughts and ideas on our current state of affairs

Cristina Tohanean — Sat, 11 Apr 2020 09:37:26 +0000

TRANSLATIONS IN THE TIME OF PANDEMIC

The silver lining or how to remain optimistic during the actual global circumstances. Here are some ideas on what to do.

First of all, we hope you are all well and in good health. Now, more than ever, we are thinking of the people around us, realizing the importance of standing by one another, whether we are thinking of our families, our colleagues, or our partners.

We were caught off guard in a situation without precedent in recent times. We found ourselves separated from our dear ones, from our fellow workers. Some of us have completely changed our way of working. While we are not ignoring the difficulties we are facing in this period, we have chosen to take stock of the good parts, as we experienced them at The Department, in the management of our translation projects, translations in the time of pandemic. Because our reality is more than just this virus. The reality is that we continue to exist, to work, to joke with our colleagues, to be closer than ever to the ones around us, in spite of the physical distance which separates us.

Take a look at some of the positive aspects we have experienced during this time:

Flexibility and streamlining of our way of working – in order to effectively manage working from home, especially when there are several members within the team, now is the time to introduce into the common procedure the instruments which can help you work more easily and more efficiently. Now, as well as in the future, whatever the future may look like;
Developing the ability to plan a day, to plan your time – in order to have the discipline of carrying through your daily tasks, with the same concentration. And also the discipline of taking the much-needed breaks;
Diversifying, whether consciously or not, your people management techniques– so as to manage a remote team efficiently, as well as with empathy and support, against the current background;
Eliminating paperwork – since in Romania we still need papers and stamps for certain translations, this is a welcome break. For us and for the planet, as well. Our hopes are that we will then see a change, namely getting rid of certain useless procedures;
Spurring creativity – because we have to be creative and this seems to be an auspicious time. To keep our activities going, we have to come up with the most creative solutions. Or to make major changes in approaching the business. Now is the time to take stock of our priorities and skills and to reach major decisions, in order to strengthen what we have built so far. Needs change continually, and we have to keep up with them;
Empathy and strengthening our relations – because we noticed that absolutely all our interactions with our clients and our external co-workers have been incredible in this period. Absolutely everyone has been more understanding, more considerate to the others. This testifies to the fact that we have surrounded ourselves with valuable people and that we are truly partners, for better or for worse;
Specialization – because some of us may have the time to focus on improving our training, by taking classes which have always been on the to-do list and never became a priority;
Clarity – because now is the time to take a step back and clearly establish our priorities. Flight-or-fight mode. This assumes having an overview, which is so necessary for decision-making and for a coherent strategy, whether you are a freelancer or representing a business;

Considering the above, we wanted to share some ideas on how you can better manage this situation:

Set up a clear budget. If your income has been affected, you should know what minimum average revenue you will be needing in the following months. Starting from there, make a list of all your expenses for this period. Check whether you can optimize some expenses.
For instance: state aid that can be provided to you/negotiate a rent reduction. Ask for your accountant’s advice.
Make a list of everything else you might need to manage your activity as smoothly and as efficiently as possible. Check whether there are programs or other instruments which can help you and which you are not yet using:
a. A cloud storage solution – One Drive, Google Drive, Dropbox etc.;
b. Task organization and management – Trello;
c. Migration to an email client for more efficient organization of your mail – Outlook;
d. Cloud-based CAT Tool – Wordfast Anywhere, Memoq Cloud, Wordbee etc.;
e. Streamlining communication within the team – Slack (you can connect with Trello, LeaveBoard, and many other useful programs) + Zoom (or other video-conferencing platforms).
Analyze your income statement and send out customized requests to the clients who have late payments, to make sure that they are supporting you in this period, confirming that they did not misplace the invoices and reminding them to pay the already-provided services.
Communicate with your clients, so that they may know that you are operational and that you are there to support them. Communicate empathetically and in a supportive manner. Now more than ever.
Conduct an analysis of your personal skills or of your team’s skills and set up a clear strategy applicable to this period. If your revenues have so far been based on conference interpreting or on interactions with the public, rethink the services you provide and make a change matching your strengths. Attend online classes, so that you may be prepared for the new approach.
Remember your plan to have a website? Or a website in the foreign language you translate into? Now is the perfect time to carry this plan to completion.
Invest time in having an overall view and a strategy. This is crucial.
Don’t forget about emotional support. Be kind to yourselves and to your team.

Translations in the time of pandemic – we remain optimistic, by your side,
Cristina Tohănean and the team.

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