Quality Assurance In The Localization Project Management

In the summer vacation of 2016,the author took part in the internship of SDL Company.During this period,I worked as an assistant to the translation project manager.I took part in the management of the Sony localization project and practiced the whole process of quality assurance.Localization project management involves many participants,including customers,project managers,translators and desktop publishing staffs etc.They follow the specific translation process of their company with the help of a variety of communication platforms,computer aided translation tools,translation technologies and management tools.Therefore,this report mainly explores how to communicate effectively,control the schedule,linguistic problems,and handle non-technical errors and other issues in the project management process,so as to help each party to improve the efficiency of the process.The aim is to promote the high efficiency of the project and ensure the high quality and high production capacity,forming a virtuous cycle of high customer satisfaction degree and high efficiency of the translation department.In the process of project management,the author practiced and observed,and find out some problems.Combined with relevant localization cases and researches,and looked up related documents about communication,translation project process,project management and translation tools etc.,consulted senior management personnel and some experts in the language service industry,the author formed this internship report.The report found that reduction of communication channel and clear allocation of responsibilities can reduce the time used for project communication;pay attention to the most important information and make full use of tools are good for the progress control;if team members are willing to find out problems and share with others,many linguistic problems can be avoided;whether translators are familiar enough to the project guidebook and administrative staffs have good working habits or not,are key factors to avoid non-technical errors.For the problems of the process itself,the author also put forward her opinion,but it still needs further discussion.Through the feedback and evaluation of translators,the leader of the company and my colleagues,as well as the author’s personal practice,we know that the author’s suggestions simplify the overall process and act as precautions,so that they avoid the waste of time which caused many trivial problems and,certainly,have an effect on quality assurance.At present,there are few researches on the localization project quality assurance,and there are not many related monographs.The reason lies in that the localization industry rises in China for only a short time.And the research on the quality assurance of translation projects is mainly from the perspective of linguistic theory.Those from the point view of project management and its practice can be counted on the fingers of one hand.The author hopes that this report can enrich the practice cases of localization industry project management,and provide some reference for the future development of localization translation enterprises.This report is divided into six parts: the first part is the simple introduction of this project.The second part describes the overall process of localization projects.The next three parts analyze the process from three stages,before,during and after the translation,and illustrates how to implement quality management with translation skills and tools.And the sixth part is the conclusion.It describes some problems that the author encountered during the overall project process and quality assurance processes,and then proposes relevant solutions based on my own practice.The gains and reflections that my internship brought to me are also summed up in this chapter.