Agile Management In Translation Projects-A Report On Translation Internship

This internship report is based on the author's translation internship in a medical device company from June to August 2019.The focus would be agile management in translation projects.Most translation projects are time-tight,but available translators are limited that causes many of them have to be involved in several projects in the meantime;in some other cases,the client modifies the source text as translation is going on so that the translation should be updated accordingly.Facing the urgent project schedules and constantly changing source text,the traditional linear management method is no longer applicable.To improve speed and quality,many project managers adopt agile management whose incremental and iterative nature is suited to managing such translation projects.The author would report two translation projects that applied the agile management method during the internship to explain the reasons for using agile management from the perspective of project analysis and select one of them as a case study to describe in details from three stages,before translation,during translation,and after translation.Based on the implementation workflow,the author summarized the advantages and limitations of agile management in translation project management.For example,it has a quick response to new demands and it promotes close cooperation and no-barrier communication,bringing about faster and higher-quality delivery.However,it may also increase the working pressure and it has stricter requirements on the working chain,probably leading to higher administrative costs.Although agile management is mainly used in software development,we can apply agile management according to the characteristics of translation projects.At present,many language service enterprises have adopted the agile management model in translation and localization projects to improve management efficiency,but related research is still not enough.It is hoped that this report would provide some inspiration to those interested in translation project management.