A day in the life of a Translation Project Manager
Ever wondered what a day in the life of a Translation Project Manager is like? What we do? Who we contact? What decisions we make? Well, I’ll give you a run-down of what a typical day looks like for me at Dialogue.
I’ve been a Translation Project Manager at Dialogue for almost 10 months now. I decided to become a Translation Project Manager as I enjoy working with different clients and having the opportunity to work with linguists all over the world. I’ve always been a travel and language lover, and having a BA in German Studies, Dialogue felt like the right company for me.
For a bit of context, I currently have 5 clients that I manage projects for, which means I split my time and resources accordingly. It’s important to mention that this isn’t a fixed structure and can vary depending on when project requests come through to us!
8:30
Log on and say Good Morning to the team on Slack.
8:40
It’s time to head to my inbox. My inbox typically has a mixture of both client and linguist emails. The emails may be a new project request from a client, a linguist query, a linguist confirming if they can take on/or have completed a job with us.
9:00
Once I’ve replied to all the initial emails, I’ll put any language queries in an excel and send them across to the client to get their feedback. I’ll also put together any quotes of requests that came through overnight for the client.
9:30
All the team at Dialogue come together for a morning catch up on zoom. We talk about what we’ve been up to and if any new projects have come in.
9:45
I go and put the kettle on.
Carina with our Dialogue values mug filled with a hot cuppa!
9:50
If I’ve received the purchase order from clients for the go ahead of a project, I begin reaching out to linguists to place the job. I ensure they have access to the files in Memsource and provide them with any necessary reference materials.
10:30
We have our Translation Team meeting, where we each discuss how our projects are going and ask for any support that we may need from each other.
11:00
When linguists confirm if they can work on the job, I begin issuing their purchase orders accordingly.
12:00
I begin running quality assurance checks on the translations that have come back in. When doing this, I look out for typos, extra spacing, if queries have been followed, punctuation, numbers, and tags etc. If I spot something that doesn’t look right, I’ll get in touch with the translator to check.
13:00
Time for my one-hour lunch break. I typically have my lunch and then either go for a walk around the block or run any errands that I have.
14:00
I sometimes have meetings with my clients to either check in on any projects they have in the pipeline or answer any questions they may have and ask any questions that we have.
15:00
When the final documents have been checked, I begin formatting the files in Word, PowerPoint, Excel etc.
16:00
Send the final version of the translations and the invoice to the client.
16:30
Answer any emails that come in from linguists or clients.
17:00
Log off for the evening.
Was that what you were expecting?
My favourite part of the day is when I’m able to run the checks on German files as not only does it put my German skills to the test, but I also pick up so much new vocab in the process. For example, last week I learned the word: “Eisenbahninfrastrukturverwaltung”. I’d tell you what it means, but that would be too easy!
If you’d like to learn more about the team and what we do here at Dialogue, why not head over to our website? Be sure to check out our team videos!