Applying PMI Methodology To Translation Project

With the development of globalization,intercultural communication,and the expansion of translation market,society has some new requirements for translation practice.It has the tendency to be characterized with industrialization,professionalization,projectization,and service integration.Sometimes even speed or efficiency rather than translation quality can be the top priority.One single translator cannot handle a translation project any more.How to effectively manage the concerned factors,such as human resource,time,cost,and risks,has been an important task.Therefore,translation project management is becoming increasingly important.This report originates from the author's internship practice as a project manager of the translation service base of School of Interpreting and Translation Studies(SITS)at Guangdong University of Foreign Studies(GDUFS),in which he is mainly responsible for the management of several translation projects.One of the projects is to serve the LinkedIn Corp.,the world's largest professional social network at present.The major responsibilities of the project manager include: getting in touch with the client and knowing their specific needs and requirements of the translation project,choosing the correct translator(s)and reviewer(s),final confirmation of the translation work,submitting the translation to the client,communicating with all sides,organizing customer satisfaction survey,and so on.Through the whole internship the author has learned a lot,getting more acquaintance with the five process groups of the general translation project: Project Initiating,Planning,Executing,Monitoring and Controlling,and Closing.Besides that,the author also knows more about what responsibilities a translation project manager shoulders.There is no doubt that this will be of great help to the author's future career and personal development.By comparing the translation project management with standardized translation project management process that is usually adopted by modern translation and localization companies(taking the five process groups and ten knowledge areas of project management by the PMI as an example),the author summarized the current situation of translation team organized by university students in terms of its characters and disadvantages.After that,some feasible suggestions were put forward by the author.It is hoped that this report will shed some lights on those who are interested in translation project management and translation team made up of university students.