By Roser Pararols*

Imagine you have a 100,000-word translation to deliver within a time frame of 15 business days (i.e. three 5-day weeks).

For some project managers, the calculation is quite simple: You need only share the work among 3 translators who will each translate 2,220 words a day. And even if they do not explicitly impose our internal organization on us, we are asked for partial deliveries of 13,000 words every two days, which means that we have to involve 3 colleagues from the very start.

This type of project management, which is often not even justified by delivery or project-use constraints, is typical of “nervous” project managers who want to be sure that we will not be late. Alas, from a quality viewpoint, it is genuinely counter-productive…

On the one hand, it is very difficult to harmonise vocabulary and style when three colleagues are working concomitantly from the very first sentences of a project, even if they regularly consult each other. Moreover, it very often happens that the imposed order of deliveries does not take into account the logic of the translation and that the meaning of certain concepts in the first files delivered only becomes clear at the end.

Even when such partial deliveries are justified by the fact that there is a final harmonization in-house, this way of working only complicates the task of the final reviewer, who has to react as he goes along and who is always a few files behind on the new instructions he would like to give in terms of vocabulary or style…

Many problems could be avoided if we managed things differently. For this type of project, it is better to have a colleague and a proofreader involved in the first phase, when the glossary is consolidated and the memory created, even if this means that nothing is delivered the first week.

The first 10% of the data base (10,000 words in this case) are decisive for the rest of the project, provided that the first files to be translated are well chosen.

With a good memory and a good validated glossary (if possible, validated by the subsidiary in the country concerned), the translation process can be accelerated as from the second week, during which 4 colleagues can work on the translation if necessary.

The total deadline will not be modified, but the final proofreading will be easier and the overall quality of the project will be improved.

* Roser worked as a freelance translator for the first two years of her career, during which she had the opportunity of working with Nintendo as a JP/EN/FR-ES translator before joining a video-game localization company in Ireland, where she worked for two years. She then specialized in project management and was awarded the Professional Diploma in Project Management by Oxford College ODL. In our team, she is in charge of project management and proofreading.