The solution is to adopt modern management technology and implement advanced project management.
The traditional manual workshop translation service can no longer meet the strict requirements of modern business for quality and efficiency. Traditional translation services emphasize personal experience, ability and credibility to ensure quality. When encountering a lot of work, simple crowd tactics are often adopted. Although the personal level of translation may not be low and the sense of responsibility is not bad, it is difficult to ensure that everyone's ability can be brought into play without effective organization and coordination. If there is no systematic quality assurance system or measures, it will be difficult to ensure the quality when translating large-scale products.
The more advanced translation service model holds that the service provider is an organization (company, department or project team), not an individual. In order to ensure efficiency and quality, we should, on the basis of improving the personal quality of translators, emphasize the optimization of workflow and the improvement of the coordination of organizational members, and ensure that all work is carried out in accordance with the specified requirements with a strict quality assurance system, thus ensuring the quality of the final product.
A basic assumption of this idea is that no service can be completed by one person alone. Even if a very small task only needs translation and no extra work, in order to avoid problems caused by personal carelessness and carelessness, different people are still needed to complete translation, proofreading and testing.
Regarding how to ensure quality, I intend to send another topic "Quality Management of Translation Services", which only introduces the application of project management in translation services.
Usually, a series of activities involved in developing and producing a new product or providing new services according to certain specifications and requirements are called projects. These activities should be completed under the constraints of certain time, cost and human resources. Generally speaking, a project is a process organized to achieve a final product. It is not difficult to see that large-scale translation service activities fully have the characteristics of the project.
Project management is to formulate a set of principles, methods, auxiliary means and skills for effective management of target work in a specific organizational environment. Quoted from Joan knutson & Project Management; Ira Bitz (Chinese translation).
The purpose of project management can be summarized as follows:
Draft technical and management documents detailing requirements and plans as the basis for project implementation.
Effectively coordinate the activities of relevant personnel (project team members, customer representatives, etc.). ).
When applied to translation services, project management mainly involves the following tasks:
Personnel organization
The translation of technical documents often involves certain professional technical knowledge, so it is necessary to choose translators with appropriate background, or let technical experts and experienced translators work together to foster strengths and avoid weaknesses. Appropriate proofreaders and typesetters are equally important for the smooth completion of the work.
Determine specifications and requirements
If you don't follow the rules, you are not Fiona Fang. Only by making clear the detailed translation requirements can we make clear the objectives, ensure the same pace and avoid duplication of work. This is an important measure to ensure product quality.
Make a progress plan
Work task decomposition, drawing activity network diagram, estimating the period of each activity, analyzing the critical path, balancing the resource demand, and making detailed work allocation and time schedule. In this process, CPM/PERT technology is applied, and most of the work is done with the help of project management software (such as MS Project).
Tracking and control
Grasp the actual progress of the project at any time through work records, regular reports and sampling inspections, and compare it with the plan. If there is deviation, take appropriate corrective and preventive measures.
Change management
In the course of the project, there may be changes in customer needs and unforeseen changes or problems in technology and personnel. In order to ensure the smooth progress of the project when there are changes, it is necessary to implement change management.
Project management is a science and an art, and its application in translation services is unique. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss the project management of translation work in depth. Here, we can only put forward the concept of translation project management, emphasize its importance, and play a role in attracting jade.