6 Reasons Why Translation Project Management Is Indispensable!

Translation is now a big business that generates billions of dollars and fuels the growth of various sectors. At this blog, we will try to look into how professional language service providers (LSPs) handle their translation and localization projects and strive to apply the world’s most efficient project management techniques. 

Translation project management is the process of identifying client requirements and utilizing the available resources to come up with a comprehensive framework and project delivery plan accordingly. This multistage process also involves organizational responsibilities and managerial tasks that vary significantly from one project to another.

To ease the hectic stress of translation details and satisfy clients’ need to communicate with one single point of contact, reliable translation companies hire professional and qualified project managers who are capable of harnessing the entire translation and localization projects. 

The real challenge facing a translation project manager is to keep the balance between the translation cost and turnaround time without compromising on quality. Considering all financial and managerial variables, project managers are always required to leverage all their internal and external resources to deliver timely tasks at the highest quality and fastest turnaround possible.

The questions here: What exactly are the responsibilities of a translation project manager? What does he/she do to come up with the ultimate output and distinguish their projects?

Main roles of a translation project manager

Here we list the main duties of translation project managers and look into the approaches they adopt to tackle these intertwined work responsibilities.

1. Financial planning

A proficient translation project manager gets involved in every single financial detail of his/her project. From setting out a proper budget plan as per the client requirements to negotiating the deal and preparing the project quotation, the translation project manager is partially responsible for mapping out the project’s financial strategy. 

Project managers also turn the budget and financial plans into reasonable resource allocation and practical work schedules. Based on their understanding of the project’s scope and client requests, project managers might decide to outsource some calibres or take advantage of linguists working in different locations and time zones to minimize the cost, time, and efforts.

2. Work scheduling

Outlining the project comes at the forefront of any project manager’s responsibilities list, as the formation of a detailed and accurate work schedule makes it easier to organize and coordinate the multiple moving parts of the project.

Taking into account all available assets and resources, the qualified project managers set an adequate framework for all team members, including translators, editors, proofreaders, and in some cases software engineers and desktop publishing (DTP) specialists. 

As a project manager, it is proven that the better you preliminarily set out a thoughtful work schedule, the more successful your project will pan out.

3. Team selection

Running sufficient resource allocation and team filtration tasks might be underestimated. In fact, selecting the right team of linguists and specialists depending on each project’s requirements is key to success. 

Expert project managers analyze the nature of the tasks and choose the right combination of team members to come out with the best results. Medical and legal translation projects, for instance, require the involvement of a subject matter expert and the deployment of multiple quality checks by experienced editors. While website and software localization projects necessitate the selection of technology-oriented translators and highly qualified localization engineers.

4. Communication management

The hardest and most hectic part of a translation project management is to manage communication between all the project’s stakeholders. Imagine the hassle of a translation project manager who represents his/her localization company in front of the customers, while acting as the client’s representative in front of his/her internal team members.

In fact, communication starts with initial kick-off meetings with both the clients and team members to discuss all relevant details and settle on the most important guidelines. It extends afterward to the escalation of any translation queries or issues that might come up and communicating them with the client, in addition to receiving the client’s suggestions and complaints and handling them the right way. 

Acting as the central point of contact, the project manager’s communication handling duties continue as long as the project runs and usually do not end up until the delivery of the project and the application of the client’s comments and amends.

5. Work monitoring

Many people think that project managers are only concerned with the managerial and planning works, except that they actually get engaged in the technical translation works. Project managers are the ones who first receive the source files from the client, review them, and do what it takes to make it ready for translation. They also make sure to maintain term bases and translation memories and allow the computer assisted translation (CAT) tools when necessary. 

At the end, project managers evaluate and analyze the translated documents and decide if they need to be reviewed once more before delivering them to the client, in line with the preliminarily-set timeframe.

6. Constant follow-up

Clients usually want to keep track of the progress of the translation process and project managers are the ones who are in charge of this. One of any translation project manager’s responsibilities is to keep the client posted with any updates occuring during the lifecycle of the project. 

In addition, project managers reassure the clients from time to time about the smooth workflow, either by sending samples or updating a shared spreadsheet with the percentage of the completed work. They also wrap it all up by ensuring the delivery of  satisfactory output to the clients at high quality, quick turnaround, and reasonable prices.

Managing all these hectic tasks, project managers are increasingly establishing their position as the main pillar of any successful translation project. Language service providers are competing to hire passionate and qualified project managers to guarantee the optimization of their resources and the provision of satisfactory services to their clients.

Following the best practices and highest translation project management standards, EuroLingo has gained its reputation as one of the leading translation and localization houses in Eastern Europe. We have been entrusted giant translation projects by more than 400 clients worldwide and acknowledged for our superb customized services. We pride ourselves on having a fully dedicated team of qualified translation project managers who handle large-scale projects and come up with outstanding results.

Partner with us now and rest assured you will get a standard of excellence at the highest quality and lowest rates.