Welcome to Marketing Tips for Translators – the podcast for freelance translators (and interpreters) where experts and other translators share their best business and marketing tips. A translation project is often a complicated task and can sometimes involve many people and tasks, especially if it is translated into several languages, and needs proofreading, editing, back translation, layout etc. How do we best manage translation projects? Someone who can answer this is todays interviewee, a fellow winner of the Proz.com Community Choice Award for best book – on project management. This French translator, company owner and project manager wrote the book How to manage translation projects, but her secret passion is singing karaoke. Welcome to the podcast Nancy Matis. Welcome Nancy!

First of all, tell us a bit about yourself and your career in translation.

You just won the Proz.com Community Choice award for best published book. Congratulations!

Your book is called How to manage your translation projects and that is what I would like to talk about today.

Why is it important for translators to know about project management? How can we benefit from it?

What are the steps in managing a translation project?

Project management is not only for translation agencies and the actual project managers, every little translation job a freelance translator takes on can also be a project to manage, especially if we are dealing with direct clients.

What information is needed to prepare a good quote for a translation project?

Why is scheduling and deadlines so important?

How do you guarantee that a project is profitable?

How do you recruit the right resources and what is expected from each person in a translation project?

Finally, a question I ask every interviewee, what marketing strategy works well for you right now in your translation business?

Useful links mentioned in this episode:

WEBSITE on TPM:
Translation Project Management website
http://www.translation-project-management.com/
BOOK:
How to manage your translation projects
http://www.translation-project-management.com/book
STUDY by one student:

• STUDY AND SURVEY RESULTS: Risk Management in Translation Projects http://www.translation-project-management.com/blog/study-and-survey-results-risk-management-translation-projects

SCHOOLS:

• Lille III, France: TSM Master – in M1 and M2, students follow Translation Project Management courses https://www.univ-lille3.fr/ufr-lea/formations/masters/tsm/
• ISTI (ULB), Belgium: Master en traduction et industries de la langue, including Localisation courses as well as Translation Project Management http://ti.ulb.ac.be/fr/node/10.html
• KU Leuven, Belgium: Postgraduate Programme in Specialised Translation, including a course on Translation Project Management https://onderwijsaanbod.kuleuven.be/syllabi/e/Y00786E.htm#activetab=inhoud_idp1238800
• Universiteit Gent, Belgium: Master of arts in translation, including an introduction to Translation Project Management http://studiegids.ugent.be/2015/EN/FACULTY/A/MABA/AM7VRTED/AM7VRTED.html

Thank you Nancy! Phew, a lot to think of to make sure the translation projects succeed and run smoothly. I think it is great that we as freelance translators can learn the steps in project management, both so we understand the project manager’s point of view when we work with them, and so that we can manage our own projects with direct clients in a professional way. Thank you also to all the listeners for taking time out of your day to listen to these great tips. For links and more information, please go to marketingtipsfortranslators.com, where you can also check out other free resources and marketing tips. Have a wonderful week everyone and see you in the next episode.

Nancy Matisis the author of the book How to manage your translation projects, originally published in French and translated afterwards into English.Nancy has been involved in the translation business for around 20 years, working as a translator, reviser, technical specialist, project manager and teacher, among other roles. She currently manages her own translation company based in Belgium and teaches Translation Project Management at four universities. She also ran seminars at numerous universities across Europe and was involved in some European projects, designing and evaluating training materials for future translators and project managers. You can find more information on her website: http://www.translation-project-management.com/

This episode is sponsored by:

This episode is sponsored by eCPD Webinars – quality continuing education for translators by translators. For more information, please go to www.ecpdwebinars.com.

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