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:

1. reply to the requests in a timely and professional manner;
2. perform a volume and time frame analysis before accepting a project;
3. make sure you have a PO/payment/contract for the job;
4. request clarifications or instructions;
5. prepare the files for translation;
6. translate and proofread;
7. run a QA;
8. perform the final touches on the layout and deliver on time;
9. update the Translation Memory;
10. make sure you issue the invoice and follow-up the payment;
11. 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

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:

1. Place customers at the center of everything you do;
2. Make customer services part of your brand’s DNA;
3. Don’t overpromise. Be honest and keep your word;
4. Be human. Avoid template-based communication;
5. Help customers help themselves – it might look like you are losing business, but you gain trust and respect for your expertise;
6. Be proactively helpful;
7. Our client, our boss. Respect your client and make it about the partnership that you have;
8. Maintain your focus throughout your entire collaboration, not just until you obtain the customer;
9. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes and treat them as you would like to be treated;
10. 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

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:

1. 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.
2. 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).
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. 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.
7. Invest time in having an overall view and a strategy. This is crucial.
8. 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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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: 27.03.2020

WEBSITE TRANSLATION AND LOCALIZATION

CONTEXT: Website translation and localization, DTP, translation of product sheets and press releases for opening a subsidiary in Romania.

CLIENT: LCM Systems LTD (website localization, case study)

APPROACH: Because the company trades very technical and specialized products, that cannot be found on the Romanian market, the first step of our team was to team up with the partners in Romania. Respectively, the resellers of the products, in order to build a glossary of terms. A few meetings with the client managed to clarify certain aspects of the project, because we decided to draw up a delivery schedule together, according to the priorities of the client and on the stages of the launch on the Romanian market.

• Meeting with the client – Website translation and localization project brief;
• Delivery schedule proposal depending on the stages of the launch;
• Budget proposal;
• Forming a team: Project Manager + 2 translators + 1 proofreader + 2 DTP specialists.

RESULTS: Connecting the company to the Romanian market, with the potential local clients. Practically, we helped launch the Romanian subsidiary. Our team can supply complete language localization services:

• Specialized translations;
• Website localization;
• Software localization.

Leave us a message with the details of your website/software localization project at the address noi@thedepartment.ro and we will get back to you with a technical and financial proposal.