Most of the advice covered in the previous section also applies to translation project managers. However, as middlemen,translation project managers should follow a few more management practices specific to their task. Indeed, one of their roles is to ease communication. Sorting questions, informing translators about the end client’s expectations, and managing both the project team and the client’s comments efficiently will increase the chances of achieving a successful project.
If the end client doesn’t provide you with a question template, use the translation agency’s or create a new one yourself. You should tell your subcontractors the kind of information to provide with their questions and any presentation to follow. If not, you might end up spending hours extracting data presented in various formats. Typical template categories to include would be “Date,” “File Name,” “Source Term,”“Target Term,” “Context,” “Comments,”and “Client’s Answer.” However, depending on your projects, you could always add more categories.
When teams send you questions, read each one carefully before sending them to the client. Make sure all questions are 100% clear and understandable. If you don’t understand some of the wording, the client might also be puzzled. In these cases, don’t hesitate to rewrite problematic questions yourself or ask the team/freelancer to do it. Occasionally, you might even have to soften the tone used for certain questions.For example, some people are very straightforward and use imperative forms, such as “Confirm this term.” You could make this sound a bit more polite by saying, “Can you please confirm that this term is correct?”In addition, double-check that all the appropriate categories provided in a template are filed in properly. If not, correct any mistakes and supply any missing information yourself (e.g., include context or correct the referenced file names).
Adapt all questions to the recipient’s language level.
While reviewing the questions, try to answer some yourself instead of sending them all directly to the client. Project managers gain experience from one job to the other. After managing several projects in the same sector or for the same client, you might already know a lot about the subject and be able to assist your team.Alternatively, you can turn to your colleagues or company staff (linguists or members of the technical team) to see if they can provide you with more information. On multilingual projects, it could make sense to first send the question file to all team members, asking if anyone can share explanations that could be helpful to others.
If the schedule allows, avoid sending questions every day or, worse, multiple times a day. Instead, gather questions together and send them in batches once or twice a week, or even once or twice a month for very long projects. Of course, it’s preferable to send questions as soon as possible, but take the time to group them to avoid flooding the end client with too many e-mails.
Delete any duplicate questions before sending the question file to your client. Similarly, make certain that some of those “new” questions have not already been clarified in previous batches or even during an earlier project. Remember, the fewer questions the client receives, the more chances you’ll have of obtaining answers. Why not create a reference folder for each client containing all the questions that have already been solved?
Depending on the client’s profile, it might be worthwhile to separate questions related to content from questions related to language. For instance, the client’s job coordinator might decide to transfer queries on product features to engineers who are able to supply detailed technical explanations. They could then send the proposed translated terms in Korean to their local manager in Seoul and the Dutch ones to the sales team in Amsterdam. Receiving three different files will definitely make this contact person’s work easier.
Once the client has dealt with the questions and returned the answers, check carefully to ensure that they are all clear and none are missing. Clarify any issue with the client first instead of sending the file to several translators or linguistic teams who will then face the same problems. In the event of an emergency or time differences, you could first ask your teams to confirm that everything has been addressed properly, as they might be better experts in the field than you. To avoid involving several teams in what might turn out to be a waste of time, you could instead ask for one team’s opinion.
Decide if the responses need to be communicated only to those asking the questions or if they might be useful for everyone working on the project. For instance, getting confirmation that the client’s Italian validator prefers frame instead of signature for the English term “signature” will only be useful to the Italian team. Whereas if the German team wanted to know whether proper names appearing in examples needed to be localized (e.g., replacing “John Smith” with “Max Meier” in the target text) the client’s answer will be valuable to all the project’s teams. Unless otherwise instructed, all the linguistic teams working on the translation project should definitely be notified of these decisions.
If a team member disagrees with some of the client’s answers, verify that any comments to the client are written in a respectful way. Whenever needed, rewrite comments yourself to avoid offending the client. Obviously, check that the justification for rejecting a client’s response is correct and well argued and will result in the client either confirming the initial choice or validating your team’s comment.To be on the safe side, before delivering the final files to the client, you could perhaps double-check that all teams have properly implemented the answers the client has provided across the entire project.
Finally, let’s point out that for some projects, when the schedule allows, it could be extremely beneficial if the translation project manager takes the time to review the source text to spot any potential issues and solve those with the client. This will allow the project manager to either supply the necessary information or communicate issues that have already been solved when launching the project into production.
