You have some memories and impressions about the translators and proofreaders you are working with as a project manager of a translation agency or language department of a firm. How do you make notes about their previous work to see who you should assign a new incoming project to? The translation needs to be done, obviously, but to make sure it is delivered on time and flawless, you need to pick the best experts – and the best pair of experts. This is how you can build your own database of professionals on Babelprojekt.
No one can provide excellent work in a too wide range of tasks – and speaking of translation, here it means: in too many fields. If someone is good at translating legal texts, it doesn’t mean that they are just as good in translating a novel for young adults. The reason is very simple: gaining a thorough knowledge takes time. And time – that’s one of the main “problems” with human life – is limited. So if you are not satisfied by having a superficial knowledge about anything, you need to go deep down into the subject and become a master. Given that the time is limited, you cannot be a master of too many things. And that’s how we come to our original topic. Translation experts may be masters of some fields of texts, but you cannot expect them to deliver high quality work in a field outside of their substantial profession. Just imagine how much time and stress you can save from being wasted if you pick the best person for a certain job. The proofreading process will also be speeded up if the proofreader doesn’t have to spend much time with correcting the initial text, because it is almost perfect already. That’s one evidence we took into consideration when we built up the translation workflow management system called Babelprojekt.
The other thing is, every now and then you bump into the situations where you recognize: there can be a certain unexplainable and unreasonable negative tension between people. Even between colleagues. For some of them it takes seconds to be on the same page with each other, for other pairs of people it takes eternity to – if it’s possible at all. Sometimes it is not. And it does affect the work. So it is just one thing that you pick the best experts for a job, you also need to pick them as a pair so that the work can be done fast and easy. What we implemented in our translation workflow management system to help you with these issues: you can make ratings and notes about people’s work. After each project, you can add a rating with just one click on one of the stars from 1 to 5.
Furthermore, you can also add comments about people, even pairs by wirting, for example: good pair with translator David Smith or good pair with proofreader Eva Klein.
And one more comment to what’s described above: you can even save money with that. This is because, first of all, time is money, and we discussed how limited we are with it. Second of all, money is money. Meaning: translators, if you pick them correctly from your own database you built in Babelprojekt, will not have to make a quotation with a higher price for a job if it is excatly the field they are masters of!