A Preliminary Study On Professional Translation Project Team-building

We are in the era of globalization with an explosion of documents in need oftranslation and the language service industry becoming a global industry. Serviceproviders featuring traditional translation services, which actually account for70%oftheir income, adopt project management to ensure efficiency and quality. Thus translationmanagement is heatedly discussed in various forums and conferences. Fact is in China,scholars of translation studies rarely talk about this topic, if not about an exact case studyor sharing of managerial experience. This thesis is making an attempt to answerquestions like “what is a professional translation project team”,“what are the difficultiesto build such a team” and “what is the trend of its development”.After an introduction of the research background, the second chapter summarizesrelevant management theories and tools, including team building and intervention andproject management which serve as the basis for later analyses. Two cases of translationorganizations in Chinese history are then described in terms of organizational structure,team management and performances. Linguitronics Corporation is chosen as a case forprofessional translation service provider who is experienced and mature in businesspractice. Through comparison of the three cases, the thesis defines a professionaltranslation project team as a small group of project managers, translators, editors andother supportive staff with unique techniques, working for shared goals, definiteperformance targets and with common tools, who are willing to shoulder responsibilitiesfor each other. Three features of, as well challenges facing the team are1) to improve theprofessional skills of translators being;2) to erect sound assessment and managementsystems;3) to produce a team product with teamwork in real sense. As companies arestarting to spot out niche markets in Europe and the USA, key words for futuretranslation project teams will be specialized and technology-bound.Project management is now more familiar to students and educators of professionaltranslation as it is taught in several institutes. The topic this thesis is talking about and theconclusions it reaches provide good references to both future studies and pedagogy.