Translation as a Profession (Benjamins Translation Library)

98 Translation as a ProfessionHaving a translator on site means the client gets all the benefits of an in-housetranslator without having any of the responsibilities and additional expense thatgo with employment.A translation outsourcing project manager may be found either in a translationservice or in a translation company. This is someone who manages translationprojects by sub-contracting the work entirely to translators from outside theservice or company. This involves:– finding and selecting the relevant external service providers,– planning the work schedule,– drawing up the specifications,– negotiating the purchase conditions,– ensuring quality control,– managing the project budget, etc.If the main contractor is a translation company or an official translation service,the interfacing between work provider and sub-contractors will be done by one orseveral in-house translators who have a good knowledge of the client company andof its products and services, and who are also familiar with translation processes.This favours close co-operation between the sub-contracting translators andthe work provider who, being familiar with the translators’ needs and difficultieswill therefore be able to respond quickly and effectively or even anticipate whateverproblems they are likely to encounter.In some cases, the team-leader in charge of managing the translators may notbe a translator, but a manager from another area of the business. In this case,the team manager will generally have an engineering background and will expecttranslators to comply with production and control procedures similar to thosefound in industry. This is a sign that they both take translation just as seriously asany other kind of industrial process and consider translators to be highly skilledspecialists in their own field.In the 1980s, IBM translation project managers were called translation ‘pilots’.Everyone joining the company in the higher ranks of management had to ‘pilot’translation projects for a whole year – which was considered as good a way as anyother of getting to know the company and its products.Companies now also more and more frequently outsource translation projectmanagement to external translators or translation companies. The latter will notactually carry out the translation themselves, but will manage the project andsubcontract the work to other translators. The service that the translator or thetranslation company provides is not translation; it is translation management.This can be particularly effective since the person interfacing with the workprovider and the translators respectively is perfectly aware of all the problems that