17/06/2024

It’s Quality Time again. In a new episode of our expert interviews, Nicole Sixdorf, Head of People & Culture at oneword, spoke to Dr Carmen Canfora, lecturer at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. This resulted in an exciting discussion about career opportunities in the translation industry and the importance of project managers in producing high-quality translations.

Dr Carmen Canfora is a risk management consultant at RisikoScouts and, as a lecturer in translation studies at Mainz University’s faculty of languages in Germersheim, trains the next generation of translators and language experts. oneword is a regular guest at the university’s practical days, including this year, and gives students an insight into the day-to-day work of an ISO 17100-certified translation service provider.

Dr Carmen Canfora (University Germersheim/RisikoScouts) and Nicole Sixdorf (oneword GmbH)

Nicole Sixdorf (NS): I’m delighted that we are able to talk today about careers in the translation industry and take a look at the people behind the words and sentences in a translation. It feels like there are as many career opportunities in our industry as there are languages in the world. Because the written word appears everywhere in our lives, the options for trained translators and language experts are almost limitless. One career path, for example, is translation project management. At our Böblingen office, this is at the core of what we do, it’s what we’re really passionate about (laughs). This leads me on to my first question. You’re a lecturer at Germersheim in the Faculty of Translation Studies, Linguistics and Cultural Studies. How important is project management in the professional careers of young translators?

Dr Carmen Canfora (CC): First of all, thank you very much for inviting me to speak with you. I’m very pleased that we have the opportunity to talk about translator training and that I can be a representative for this side of the discussion. We actually carried out a graduate study related to your question a few years ago. We noticed that many of our graduates end up in project management. This prompted us to place much more emphasis on project management in our reformed bachelor’s and master’s degree programmes.

NS: Project managers need to master a very diverse set of skills in order to effectively coordinate translation projects across languages, cultures and countries. In addition, the role includes performing quality checks, professionally using translation technology, fulfilling customer expectations and, of course, meeting ever tighter deadlines. This results in a very high standard of training for us at oneword. Our all-round project managers are the central interface in the translation process. Do these requirements also affect your curriculum?

CC: This is actually a very important topic for us and it’s the reason why we integrated project management into our module handbooks. We also have courses that focus purely on translation project management. Simply, good project management is important. And of course, there are many project management skills that we teach on other courses. By strengthening your translation skills, you also strengthen many project management skills at the same time, even if project management is not necessarily always involved.

NS: So you’re saying that there are certain skills that differ, but also some that are similar between translation and project management. How would you define the differences for career starters who are trying to choose between project management and translation? Perhaps you can name specific examples and core skills that you consider to be the focal points?

CC: So I think it’s particularly important in project management to look at the entire project, including all stakeholders, and to organise it effectively. Organisational talent is a key skill here. There are simply people who are gifted at it. In addition to the typical translation tools that we teach them, they also need to master other tools. You should know what a Kanban board or Gantt chart is and be familiar with language data management, i.e. what metadata is for and how it is used. In my opinion, what is often underestimated in project management is using translation tools correctly throughout the entire process. Not only in terms of working with the tool, but also configuring it for the various languages and tasks. I have often experienced this myself as a freelancer. For example, if the settings of quality assurance tools were not correct, I had to work through an endless list of false positives – that was horrendous (laughs).

NS: This is a good example of why broad-based project management is so important in translation.

CC: Yes, and there are other areas too, such as my favourite topic, project risk, which is a very important aspect of project management. I have to be able to identify project risks, analyse them and know how to deal with them. And then, of course, there are also many skills that overlap: in both roles you have to be able to manage and prioritise your time. Knowledge of business administration is important for costing projects. And I think a key point for both sides is clear, understandable and efficient communication. In other words, respectful communication with the various stakeholders, treating them as equals, and recognising the different needs within a project. Of course, this also includes having the ability to give and take criticism: How do I convey feedback in a way that the person on the other end can accept it? How do I ask for feedback and how do I get people to accept mistakes too?

Another key difference between project management and working as a freelancer is the amount of organisation involved. Freelancers also have to be able to organise themselves, but in project management you have to juggle a lot more balls at the same time.

NS: Yes, I absolutely agree with you. As a project manager, you step back and look at the entire translation project, and work from this viewpoint. As a translator or reviser, you tend to focus on individual aspects and tasks in one language, while project managers need to keep track of dozens of projects and languages running in parallel. Of course, this doesn’t mean that both roles are not extremely demanding. They are just different. What you have also emphasised beautifully is the combination of hard skills – methodological knowledge – and, of course, soft skills, both of which are ultimately equally crucial for translation quality. What is your view of the role of project management from a quality perspective? Is it central or secondary?

CC: First and foremost, of course, the translator’s expertise is crucial for quality. Without it, there’s nothing. However, project management plays a crucial role in ensuring that the best possible quality can be achieved in the translation. This starts with selecting the right people for the project and continues with solid project planning and costing, discussing the requirements and project specifics with the client, and collecting and providing terminology in databases by way of preparation. Above all, I think project managers need to be able to manage queries from translators effectively and efficiently. I consider this “query management” to be a key skill. In project management, pressure must be taken off translators so that they can work professionally and without undue stress. We tell students very clearly about this role and the relevance of project management. We have students who are simply extremely good at organising and planning and this is a real opportunity for them. Sometimes students come to me because they are afraid that translating is not for them after all. When you then show them how important project management is for the entire translation process, for many of them it’s an eye-opener and a career path they knew nothing about before. They realise that they are particularly good at something and that there’s a job that really suits them.

NS: I can well imagine how their eyes start to light up. (laughs) Many people are not aware of the different potential career paths. However, this also shows how broad the translation industry is and reveals the various roles and areas of activity that contribute towards high quality. Yet, regardless of the role, quality management is essential, of course. How do you address this aspect in your degree programmes?

CC: Quality assurance and quality management are embedded in the core of the degree programmes. For example, nobody leaves our “Technologies and Processes” module without having learned the right tools for the job. Every semester, there are now courses on revision, post-editing, on quality standards, such as ISO 17100 and ISO 18587, and on quality management in general. These courses are part of the master’s degree specialisation “Specialised Translation, AI and Language Management” and they introduce students to more complex quality management. They show students how to deal with many participants, many languages, large volumes and little time so that they can see what this situation looks like in practice. However, we also emphasise the importance of reliability and consistency so that clients and translation service providers can rely on the fact that quality is always guaranteed. This creates trust, which is absolutely fundamental in translation.

NS: So, just like at oneword, quality is an issue close to your heart! I understand that you generally focus on practice-based teaching?

CC: Yes, exactly. The best example is a BA seminar that takes place once a year. We’re very proud of it. We organise a mock exercise surrounding the topic “How does a translation agency actually work?”. Students can play different roles, for example as project managers, and learn first-hand how to get a project up and running and successfully complete it. Learning what can cause projects to fail is also an explicit part of the mock exercise. In teaching, I think the importance of teaching students how to learn from mistakes and, as a result, how to strengthen the translation process is still underestimated. The whole thing is always great fun, even though it is, of course, quite stressful and something completely new for the students.

NS: I think that’s great! It’s rare that everything actually goes as planned in real life. And mistakes can be used to improve the quality of the process. Experiencing the whole thing in a practical mock exercise is a really great concept.
Artificial intelligence has been on everyone’s lips for some time now and is attracting a lot of attention beyond just the translation industry. How do you generally deal with the topic? Do you think you are ready for the future?

CC: There’s a good reason why we already have a new master’s degree programme that focuses on translation and has AI in its title. Traditional specialised translation is still included, but is integrated with AI and language management. I don’t think we’re in a bad position when it comes to being fit for the future. Of course, like everyone else, we all have that feeling of “Wow, what kind of train has just arrived?” and perhaps it races past us very quickly in places. Nevertheless, we try to keep a close eye on these developments and determine what we really need to teach our students. We’re flexible in organising courses so that we can implement new content quickly if we consider it important. For example, we’ve introduced courses on prompting strategies with ChatGPT for translation projects. There’s also a course on working with large language models and an AI working group of colleagues who are working on the topic. Of course, we want our students to be equipped for what’s happening out there.

NS: Yes, that’s very important, because AI has simply become part of everyday life. You can no longer avoid it. Finally, I’d be interested to know, because we have now talked a lot about changes, how have graduates’ career choices changed in recent years?

CC: Our graduate study, which I mentioned at the beginning, provided some extremely interesting insights here. In some areas, we looked very far into the past and realised that people used to follow the classic career path of becoming a professional translator. For example, they went into conference interpreting or specialised translation. Somehow, you couldn’t imagine doing anything else. We’re now realising that for the past ten years or so a new trend has been prevalent, both here in Germany and internationally. Of the students on translation degree programmes, only 30 to 40 percent end up in the traditional professions of translation, interpreting, etc. So, there have been big changes. And we’re monitoring this very closely.

NS: What new career opportunities have opened up for students?

CC: Many end up in the field of multilingual marketing or international corporate communications. A large proportion of students also go into software and video game localisation. However, we were surprised ourselves at how many people decide to work in project management. We only really became aware of this thanks to the graduate study. This was another reason why we deliberately integrated these three areas – corporate communication, localisation and project management – into the new degree courses. The professional field is so diverse and has such a broad spectrum that in the “Professional Orientation” module we try to help students find their way through this landscape of job profiles, such as linguist, language manager, translation expert, language expert or even translation project manager.

NS: This brings us back to the beginning of our conversation. There are as many career opportunities as there are languages in the world and there’s something for everyone who wants to work with languages. I’d like to thank you very much for giving us an insight into how you address the diverse career opportunities in your degree programmes and how you dare to think outside the box of the “classic translator”.

CC: Yes, thanks again. It was great to take part in the conversation.