The position we offeris for our headquarters in central Italy and serves as the regular contact person between our clients and our network of linguists.

The Project Manager is responsible for communicating specific detailed instructions to translators and proofreadersand managing workflows and processes. He/she is accountable for the final quality assurance of translation activities.

TASKS:

• Review the jobs assigned and assess needs for additional information, e.g. compilation of glossaries, previously translated similar documents, list of acronyms, technical terminology, and translation memories.
• Coordinate translators and/or teams of translators to ensure compliance with Intrawelt production workflows and to guarantee that quality and turn-around standards are met.
• Select translators and/or teams of translators, assign them jobs, negotiate rates and deadlines and coordinate production with translators, proofreaders andclients’ reviewers.
• Keep project admin up-to-date at all times and maintain accurate records in Intrawelt’s proprietary management system.
• Check projects costs for accuracy and send purchase orders to translators and proofreaders, as well order confirmations to customers.
• Exercise sound judgment in keeping supervisor informed of potential difficulties.
• Inform supervisor of all issues affecting cost, quality and turn-around.
• Check accuracy of translation prior to sending it to client.

QUALIFICATIONS:

• College degree or degree in Translation and/or interpretation or equivalent experience
• Fluent in Italian and/or English plus one, ideally two additional languages.
• Strong computer skills (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Acrobat, html, xml).
• Familiarity with desktop publishing software (Indesign, QuarkXPress, Framemaker).
• Language skills to include ability to create glossaries, as well as to assess quality and completeness of translations
• Advanced translation memory experience (e.g. SDL TRADOS) management.
• Preferably 1-2 years previous project management experience in translation services.
• Ability to prioritize while handling multiple projects simultaneously in a hectic, time-sensitive environment
• Ability to communicate accurately detailed instructions to vendors.
• Detail and service oriented.
• Clear sense of accountability.

PERSONAL ATTRIBUTES:

• Flexible team player
• Superior interpersonal skills
• Can mix and relate well to all levels
• Demonstrated ability to work well under pressure and unsupervised
• Flexibility to work overtime required
• Professional demeanour
• Focused on goals and the overall team and company objectives
• Self-motivated and proactive
• Can improvise and innovate

If you are interested in joining us, please send your cv to both anasini@intrawelt.it and sonia@intrawelt.it.

It is possible that due to the large number of applicants, only successful candidates will be informed.

Please only apply if you are interested in the IN-HOUSE position offered for our headquarters in Porto Sant’Elpidio (FM), Marche, Italy.

Rush job. IT>EN. Due tomorrow (23-Sep) at 10am CET. Topic: contracts.

Legal translators with a spare capacity of at least 2,000 words please contact us at info@intrawelt.it.

If you’ve been on the journey to SDL Trados Studio 2011, you might be looking forward to alighting at your destination – if only to stretch your legs. It’s been a long time but we’re almost there. We’re hoping that this time, it’s not the journey that’s important but the getting there because we’re itching to get our paws on TS2011.

The TS2011 train looks very much like Japan’s bullet train but, unlike that version, you can’t set your watch by it. Japan’s bullet train sticks to its timetable and you can be certain that when it says it’ll arrive at fourteen minutes and thirty-two seconds past six in the evening,  it’ll arrive then.

The TS2011 will arrive in September. We hope. At least, it’s expected in September. Barring any works on the lines, or the wrong type of snow, or even leaves on the track.

Whenever it arrives, we’ll be the first off, rushing for the station exit to get home as quickly as we can to unwrap our new TS2011 and start playing…can’t wait!!

The Rugby World Cup has just kicked off in New Zealand and I’m hoping to see many hours of the game. Whilst my hopes are with the English, the All Blacks at home are going to be one tough cookie to crack.

And I’ve been thinking. There are some terms in rugby that must be a littly tricky to translate: try, scrum, ruck, maul, up-and-under, drop-kick and conversion. And the names of some positions (hooker, prop, scrum-half, fly-half) must have interesting names in other languages.

[see more rugby terms at Wikipedia]

Although ruggers has some thorny terms, perhaps it’s that other favourite, cricket, which wins the prize. How do you translate silly mid-on, silly mid-off, silly mid-wicket and silly point? Then there are  gulley, slip, leg break, leg bye, let cutter, leg glance, leg side, leg slip, leg spin, leg theory and leg before wicket? (not to mention the other hundreds of cricketing terms)?

[see even more cricket terms at Wikipedia]

Well, whatever the sport and wherever it’s played, there’s sure to be  a term to descibe it. My hope is that the term is equally daft and as unique as the English term. It is, after all, a funny old game.

Intrawelt joins the social networks…we’re finally on:

• LinkedIn
  http://www.linkedin.com/company/intrawelt
• Facebook
  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Intrawelt/153693088047632
• Twitter
  http://twitter.com/#!/intrawelt

Follow us.

Just being there isn’t enough…watch out for regular news and information.

Fred Brooks’ book, “The Mythical Man Month” (buy it now at Amazon), so famous within the software engineering world that it makes your eyes sting, is applicable to almost every field of human endeavour.

I read the book over 25 years ago so you might think that the fundamentals of software engineering haven’t changed all that much. Well, I’m not sure about that, but I do think that our fundamental approach to projects (whatever project in whatever field) hasn’t changed.

We received a call on Tuesday: 150,000 words had to be translated from Italian into English by Friday morning.  To be precise, the call was on Tuesday afternoon and delivery was required Friday morning first thing.

72 hours (not even) to translate 150,000 words is roughly 2,000 words an hour (most translators do 2,000 words a day and don’t tend to work 24 hours a day). And that’s not counting any revision or quality checks. In order to hit the delivery, a veritable troupe of translators was created and set to work. [Not sure if there is a collective noun for translators but although the alliteration is ok, maybe a "symposium of translators" would be better...thoughts on a postcard to...]

Even with the best will in the world, a rush job is a rush job. Quality kinda goes out the window. And with so many translators involved, consistency kinda goes out the window. The only positive, I suppose, is that the price kinda goes out the window too – the client will pay whatever it takes.

If our translation were a piece of software it would be so horribly bug-ridden that it would be unusable; in fact it probably wouldn’t even run. But bugs in software are easy to see. “Bugs” in a translation are quite different – that’s why we do proof-reading and quality checks. That’s why simply applying more resources, as Mr Brooks says, isn’t the answer.

Whichever way I look at this job, I cannot see how we don’t end up snookered. If we had turned the job down, the client would simply have found another translation agency to say “yes”. And we might have lost the client forever. It’s certainly a risk. But in doing the job, despite every caveat, the client might still complain about the translation quality and might decide to choose another agency anyway.

But what really keeps me awake at night is the client. It must have taken weeks if not months to produce the original document. 150,000 words is a pretty chunky print job. If I had been the author of that document, I wonder how I’d feel if my company valued the translation at three days’ worth.

Now before you start replying with “yes but” -  sometimes emergencies happen, someone can make a mistake – let’s think about the consequences. What if the document is a company prospectus and is being used to seek investments for millions of pounds. How much would you invest, knowing that the 200-page English document you’re reading was translated in three days by 30 different translators?

Fortunately, this wasn’t this case, but it makes you wonder, doesn’t it…exactly where will that translation go? and exactly how will it be used?

TranslatorsTraining.com Allows Translators the Opportunity to Compare CAT Tools Side by Side

For years translators have struggled to understand the similarities and differences among the various translation environment tools, but the marketing hyperbole and the different platforms and processes have made it difficult to carry out a straightforward comparison. Savvy translators know about the comparison tools at TranslatorsTraining.com that provide a neutral platform for evaluating tools’ strengths and weaknesses. Now this powerful comparison tool is being provided free of charge for all translators.

In an effort to create a level playing field, TranslatorsTraining.com sent the 21 most prominent tool vendors a single document and asked them this question: “Using your tool, what’s the best way to translate this Word document?” The result: 21 video tutorials that show the step-by-step process of translating the same document with each of the leading tools.

“This is a unique platform that allow us to see each of these tools going through the same general procedures on an identical document,” said Jost Zetzsche, author of The Tool Kit newsletter and The Translators’ Tool Box e-book and one of TranslatorsTraining.com’s designers. “For example, we can compare how Trados pre- and post-processes the file, creates a translation memory and a terminology database, and reuses content from the TM and the terminology database with how it’s done by memoQ, Star Transit, or OmegaT.”

The video tutorials are available at TranslatorsTraining.com, a joint project between Jost Zetzsche of International Writers’ Group and Intrawelt, a leading language services and eLearning solutions company. The designers have no affiliation with any of the software vendors profiled; however, many of the leading software tool providers have provided significant discounts on their tools for TranslatorsTraining.com users, accessible only through the video tutorials on the site.

According to Alessandro Potalivo, Intrawelt’s CEO: “Jost’s expertise coupled with our eLearning know-how make this a one-of-a-kind project. We are extremely excited about being able to offer the translation community the ability to compare CAT tools easily, quickly, and objectively—and now free of charge.”

“You need your text translated by a professional? And you need it proof-read? Right, and before going to print you need a really thorough double and triple check and, what’s that?, you need it all formatted professionally? By next Thursday? Yeah….of course we can do that. Trust me!”

Think about what you’re doing.

You’ve created some text. Obviously it’s important because (1) otherwise you wouldn’t have written it, and (2) you need it translated.

So if it’s important, what are you doing entrusting your important work to someone you don’t know and, by extension, cannot trust?

When you need translation services for the first time, look for companies that have independent quality accreditation. This must be the only thing you should trust. Don’t believe all the marketing hype. From there, talk to the agencies about workflow, services, costs, and so on. A little investment and information gathering will reap rewards.

If you already use a translation agency, you’re probably disinclined to find another one but maybe you should think again. A back-up can only be a good thing. And sharing your business keeps both translation agencies competitive: improving their services to give you more.

If you’d like a free one-pager with hints and tips on how to choose your first – or your next – translation agency, just send an email to info@intrawelt.co.uk

Budgets are tighter than ever and it’s a natural response to try to look for cheaper options. But this could be a false economy. If you buy a really cheap t-shirt, you can guarantee that after half a dozen washes it will have lost its shape and will look like a really cheap t-shirt. So do you buy another cheap t-shirt or do you buy quality and wear a good-looking t-shirt for much longer?

Many translation agencies, to reduce costs but to maintain their profit, simply choose cheaper freelance translators or squeeze their translators to accept less money. Both are bad.

Cheaper freelance translators usually produce poorer quality work: they rush their work, don’t follow the client’s terminology, or, let’s be honest, just aren’t very good.

Squeezing good translators creates resentment and only forces these people to work quicker, under stress, and thereby produce more human errors. Making the proof-readers job bigger than it was, so, in effect, you’ve saved on the translator but lost on the proof-reader.

The option that we recommend is that you and your translation agency work together to optimise the process: how can things be changed to reduce cost? Could the source text be shortened? Rather than a “word-for-word” translation, would a “summarised” translation be acceptable (rendering 5,000 English words to 1,000 French)?

In addition, we have many partnerships with companies where, upon reaching a certain threshold, either a discount is applied, or certain credits are made available. If you’re someone who regularly needs short phrases translated, we have an extremely simple workflow with fast turnaround and very, very competitive prices. In short, we believe that the translation agency should start acting like your partner and should start providing free “consultancy” (for want of a better term) to help you get more for less.

You can choose an overweight, sloppy, lazy, unfit translation agency. Or you could choose an efficient, alert, finely-tuned one.

Nowadays, there seems to be just too much information and too many choices. How many different breakfast cereals do we really need, for instance? And how many different cups of coffee does Starbucks need to invent?

And so we come to the “crisis”. Whilst almost everyone agrees that 2009 is over, there is debate on the c-word because people tend to look at whatever statistic supports their belief. With GDP, unemployment rates, interest rates, consumer spending, and so on and so forth, everyone’s able to pick their statistic and cling to it.

Whether or not the crisis is over, what counts even more at this time is the quality to cost ratio. Every translation agency will tell you that they deliver quality (well, what else are they going to say?) but how does that explain some agencies charging twice what we charge?

The large translation agencies invest lots of resources in sales, marketing and IT. Many are public companies and, to protect their share price, they have to deliver strong quarter-on-quarter results. But did you know that in these companies, the actual cost of the translator could be as little as 20% of the price you pay?

Let’s compare four ways to get your translation done.

1) Go direct to freelance resources
On the face of it, this is the cheapest route. But don’t forget that you have to find the resources, verify their competence somehow, possibly prepare documents for them, project manage everything, then possibly take their translation and format it. Do you have the skills and personnel to do this?

2) Go to Intrawelt

3) Go to a large translation agency

4) Go to one of the (very large) top-30 global translation agencies

Nearly every translation agency uses freelance translators. So let’s assume that the translation, proof-reading and quality check costs are the same.

Because Intrawelt is a private company, we don’t answer to shareholders and we grow at a healthy, sustainable pace. Our sales, marketing, IT and other costs are kept to a minimum. We still like to make a profit, though!

Large companies and public companies have greater overheads and invest heavily in sales and marketing and IT and so on. Look at SDL, for example, in their Annual Report (http://www.sdl.com/en/company/investors/financialoverview.asp), their overall administrative expenses for 2008 were £61.3 million. Lionbridge’s annual report for the same year (http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=111612&p=irol-irhome) shows that just their sales and marketing spend was US $33 million.

Now we all know that businesses need to make money. But when your receive the next invoice from your translation company, ask yourself what percentage of that cost was actually used to translate. And what percentage went to pay for overheads, sales and marketing.

In this graph, we show how the translation tasks are, more or less, the same, but the overhead expenses increase drastically. When you pay for a translation project, think about how much you’re paying for your translation and how much you’re contributing to their overheads.

freelance translators have only their own cost but by going direct to a freelancer, you have the overhead of project management and finding and assessing the translator. Do you have these skills in place?
Intrawelt keeps overheads to a minimum to save you money.
large translation agencies spend much more on sales and marketing – costs that they pass onto you.
very large translation agencies spend millions on marketing and have huge overheads. But the translator’s cost is, more or less, the same as ours.