Project managers bring huge value to the table as they combine superb analytical skills to anticipate and prevent any issues that may arise with excellent coordination and communication skills. They have the client’s best interest at heart and do everything within their power to make a project successful. By providing consistency and structure throughout a translation project, project management from start to finish contributes majorly to the success of the services provided by the language service industry.

Because project managers play such an important role in the translation industry, let’s take a closer look at how we select the right project managers at Terra.

How We Select Project Managers

At Terra, we choose project managers according to the specific needs and nature of the projects and accounts they will be working on. We work with both translation project managers and localization project managers. The latter of which are specifically focused on the management of multilingual localization projects done by culturally diverse linguistic teams.

The Qualifications We Look For

There are key qualifications we look for when choosing a project manager. To start, our project managers hold a university diploma in translation, communication, or project management. In order to be selected as a project manager, candidates must have excellent communication and time-management skills, proficiency level in English and another language, with a complete mastery of CAT tools. Our project managers must also be technologically savvy and have a multicultural vision of the localization industry.

In this blog post, we list the 6 must-have skills for project managers if you want more insight into the types of qualifications we look for.

Recruitment and Selection

We have a rigorous recruitment and selection process that helps us find the right candidates. This process includes a technical project management test, a language proficiency test, and several rounds of interviews with our human resources and operations representatives. Additionally, each potential project manager must complete a psycho-technical test aimed at determining the work style of the candidate so we can help determine if they are the right fit for our company’s culture.

When recruiting PMs for specific projects, Terra’s People & Culture team interviews candidates and evaluates their strengths, as well as their compatibility with Terra’s and the clients’ work ethics, values, and cultures. The intention of these efforts is always to minimize staff rotation and to give the client confidence that candidates will integrate seamlessly with their own internal team. We also use the enneagram model to determine the best strategies so the new team member can reach maximum potential within the existing team.

At Terra, we believe in promoting a safe space for neurodiversity by recognizing people’s individual skills and talents and supporting their differences and needs. We also encourage flexibility, clear communication, and the customization of the work environment for each collaborator’s needs.

The Takeaway

Project management is an essential part of the translation industry, as it helps ensure that projects are completed on time and within budget. Because project managers play such a critical role in what we do at Terra, we have a thorough hiring process and strong qualifications we look for when choosing a new project manager to join our team. That way, we can ensure our clients enjoy the best possible experience when working with us.

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Communication

All localization project managers need to be able to communicate effectively in order to make sure their team understands the goals and needs of a localization project. It’s important that localization project managers provide comprehensive notes to their team to ensure that the wrong content does not get translated. 

Because localization requires incorporating countless details, project localization managers need to be able to communicate what those details are as they evolve over the life of a project. Alongside communicating with the client and their team they may also need to communicate with external partners. It’s especially important that a localization project manager is able to effectively communicate client feedback to their team. 

How these communications can transpire vary and can happen over email, FTP, extranet, telephone, as well as in on-site meetings and through online databases.

Technology

For the localization process to be a success, the technical aspects of it need to be clear before the project even begins. Because of this, localization project managers can benefit from being technologically savvy by understanding file formats, platforms, and other requirements that will help them choose the best technological tools to aid their team during the project. Also, by being familiar with top tech tools, localization project managers can streamline certain steps of the localization workflow so that money and time are saved.

CAT tools, translation memory, term bases, and QA checks are all examples of tools that a localization project manager can implement into a project.

Risk Management

Risk management is a key part of the localization process that involves managing the uncertainties that can arise during the course of a localization project. When a localization project manager has strong risk management skills, they can proactively deal with uncertainties in a project before they even happen. You have to identify risk before it happens, not once a negative event occurs. Being able to both identify and foresee possible setbacks makes it so a localization project manager can come up with the best strategies and solutions to improve the chances of project success.

There are four different types of risk that a localization project manager can identify:

• Technical Risks. This type of risk is related to the technical aspects of a project such as requirements, software, or quality.
• External Risks. An external risk surrounds outside parties involved in a localization project including vendors or suppliers. External risks can also include factors outside the localization team’s control like market fluctuations or natural disasters.
• Organizational Risks. A risk that a localization team has more control over is their organizational risk which relates to how a localization team organizes its workflows and operations.
• Project Management Risks. These risks surround setbacks caused by estimating, planning, communicating or controlling the scope and course of a localization project.

These three essential aspects—communication, technology, and risk management—are frequently overlooked but are absolutely crucial to the success of a localization project.

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Also, project managers (PMs) are crucial because they are responsible for the entire translation process. They manage all the resources needed to tackle promptly and efficiently any project they supervise, including budget, human resources, technology assets and time.

Knowledge Boost

A complete set of skills serves as background when managing a translation workflow. First and foremost, PMs need analytical insight. PMs examine source texts and project requirements to determine which services will be needed and then establish a schedule. Time tracking is part of the value of the final product, since it implies managing time efficiently to deliver outstanding quality within the best deadline possible. 

Moreover, they select among a pool of vendors the right fit for every project. Each language professional has a different set of expertise, competencies and strengths that determine their suitability for a certain scenario. However, responsibility, proficiency and mastering of the domain are the basic preconditions for any vendor to be part of a team. 

On the other hand, PMs know how to best leverage IT resources and Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools. Through the use of translation memories, glossaries, references and quality assurance tools, they manage terminology and other linguistic inputs to ensure consistency and accuracy.

Finally, supervision is another factor that contributes to enriching the final product. PMs are in charge of monitoring the translation process. This means that any potential setback will be properly addressed on time.

Learning from Experience

The experience obtained from a project becomes input for further projects, since managing is a process of continued learning. This expertise is also what PMs put in motion in any project. They can support clients by suggesting solutions or guiding them through a range of options, noting the pros and cons of each alternative.

Furthermore, PMs analyze and manage possible strategies that add value to projects. A PM may spot that a project can benefit from a glossary or a style guide, or by adding additional revision steps, creating channels of communication for the team, etc. All these actions help ensure accurate translations and quality-driven deliverables.

PMs at the Core

PMs are involved in all the decisions concerning a translation workflow. However, they don’t work alone. Vendor managers offer support for recruiting the best talent in the industry, or localization engineers enhance the use of CAT tools, for instance. In any event, PMs bring their industry knowledge, experience and expertise to the scene. They contribute by adding value and positively impacting the quality of projects within their reach.

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The Process

Every client and project has its own unique scope and specified criteria. The typical project management process flows as follows:

1. The Account Manager (AM) receives the project from a client, analyzes it, and asks any questions that may arise from the team.
2. Next, the client receives a quote. To align with requirements from ISO 17100, there must be a clear agreement on deadlines, language pairs, resources, etc. After both parties align, the AM passes the brief to the Project Manager (PM).
3. The PM reviews the request and takes into account all instructions and requirements from the client. The PM plays a vital role in crafting a strategy and approach to reach these goals. This includes selecting the proper Computer Assisted Translation (CAT) tools that fit the needs of the project. The PM also decides which translators work best for the scope and if subject matter experts need to be assigned. To select the appropriate team, the PM takes into account additional requirements from ISO 17100. 
4. After ISO 17100 requirements have been met, the PM assigns the project to the appropriate linguists. 
5. During the process, the PM relies on project management technology to oversee every step. Terra has developed a proprietary management portal called TerraSoft. The software allows PMs to track project status from start to finish and ensure the highest quality in their deliverables. The objective is to build effective channels of communication between the linguistic team and the AM at every stage of a project. Failure to properly manage a project can result in poor quality work and unanticipated delays. 
6. The completed project is delivered to the client by the AM. The AM keeps track of the client’s responses or comments ready to share feedback with the team.

Why is an experienced project management team important?

Regardless of size, there are many moving parts and varying degrees of difficulty to a translation project. A seasoned AM and PM are imperative for the execution of every successful project. AMs and PMs skillfully navigate and coordinate efforts so that delivery is made on time and with the highest quality. Communication is a crucial element to this coordination, therefore, AMs and PMs must be well-organized and effective communicators. 

Although more and more functions of project management are being automated as technology evolves, AMs and PMs provide a “human element” that is essential and can never be outsourced. Overvaluing technology can lead to gaps in genuine connection and no opportunity to build rapport with clients. Additionally, unlike machines, AMs and PMs develop expertise in identifying key, high-performing teams of translators, editors, and quality managers to meet project requirements.

Lastly, the AMs and PMs strategically analyze each project with a focus to efficiently maximize budget. This includes identifying repetitive text and creating translation memories for future leverage. They must also ensure a termbase is created and maintained so that it, along with the translation memory, become assets for the client and linguists. Proper maintenance and updates to these resources have a positive impact on the quality of the final project. 

Why does ISO compliance guide project management?

The ISO standard is a globally approved management process. ISO requirements are important throughout the process to properly guide the team toward the highest quality of work. ISO cultivates continuous growth and improvement through guidelines, planning, monitoring, and verifying. These integral guidelines also promote consistency and client satisfaction. Dedicated to strengthening our practice, we proudly earned an ISO 17100 Certification.

To learn more on why the ISO 17100 Certification is a valuable recognition in the industry, read It’s Official! We’re ISO 17100 Certified.

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Alongside attending the workshops, guests were encouraged to network with the one hundred or so other attendees. Most guests were Project Managers, but some were company owners or linguists. Our Project Manager Rocío Fernández Cirera and our Operations Manager Santiago Lávaque attended the bootcamp in representation of Terra Translations.

The Lessons

There were many valuable lessons learned during the day’s workshops. For Santiago, a highlight of the day was a reminder to embrace new technologies like machine translation, “We should start seeing it as an ally and not an enemy. It’s also important to explain this to linguists so that they are on board with the change. And to provide them with the right training so the transition is smooth. Project Managers should be able to determine in which situations machine translation is a good fit and in which ones it isn’t.”

Another big takeaway from the day was the idea that Project Managers should have the proper tools to provide them with the autonomy and freedom they need to make decisions. Santiago agrees with this lesson, “This way they can strengthen their independence and provide a more comprehensive project management.”

Rocío walked away from the day with lessons that will help her improve her project management skill set as well, “The focus of the training was how to better work as a Project Manager, taking into account tools, organization, relationships with vendors, and the needs of clients.”

The Takeaways

Alongside valuable learning opportunities, there was also confirmation of our team’s commitment to high quality translation services. Santiago was proud that the processes, tools, and methods recommended, are ones our Project Managers already utilize. “I validated our current processes and approach to project management, in relation to both clients and translators. Most of the solutions or workarounds they suggested in the sessions are things we are already doing and have incorporated naturally over time,” Santiago said.

Rocío feels positive that our team’s efforts are paying off. “Terra Translations has steps and processes in place that other companies don’t have,” she noted. But of course, there is room for improvement. Terra Translations continuously strives to improve and fine-tune the way we do things. Rocío feels proud of our team because of this and feels reassured we are on the right path.

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