Our Client:

Our client is a Russia based Non-profit organization called Naked Heart Foundation (http://www.nakedheart.org/en/) whose aim is to ensure that every child in Russia has a loving family and a safe and stimulating place to play. It does this through creating safe and inspiring play facilities in impoverished areas, supporting foster families and families raising children with disabilities, funding NGOs that work with such families, preventing the abandonment of children in Russia and changing attitudes towards disability.

 

 

Who are we?

We are LocSpire. We are a group of 5 MIIS second year TLM students who speaks 5 different languages: English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean.

 

 

Program Management:

1. We use excel sheets to track the progress of everything

During the group meeting, we were talking about which tool we should use for project management. There are so many tools in the market such as Asana, Basecamp, Slack and so on. However, we decided to use Google Sheet at the end because it is easy to use and we can just put this sheet into our group folder to keep track of everything.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ll1x8aJxPm6v2H7zrZJNnsZzEFDvNqKY79F9LYm64dQ/edit?usp=sharing

  • Advantages: It is clear and easy to ready. Also, it is free of charge.
  • Disadvantages: It has less functions than other project management tools, so that everything should be created by ourselves manually.

 

2. Work division

Our team has 5 members and we speak 5 languages. Based on our own expertises, we decided that the role of each person should be:

  • Amelia – project manager/Russian linguist
  • Julie – localization consultant/Korean linguist
  • Alex – account manager/Russian linguist
  • Min – vendor manager/Chinese linguist
  • Naomi – localization consultant /Korean linguist

3. Creating Quotes for the Client

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B29-uAGoRqpIdmlORVoxNC1HbWM?usp=sharing

The quotes are created using the excel templates with our “LocSpire” group logo. We provide service of both TEP and linguistic review for all projects. Also, we created our quotes with 100% discount for our client. The quote made things very clear for the clients that the services that we provided. Even if we are doing a voluntary work, we still want they to be received the most professional localization service they deserve.

 

The Projects that I am working on:

Chinese Press Release Project 1

  1. Project Manager: Min (Me)
  2. Translator 1, who is also Reviewer 1
  3. Translator 2(Me), who is also Reviewer 2

Chinese Press Release Project 2

  1. Project Manager: Min (Me)
  2. Translator 1, who is also Reviewer 1, who is also the zh-CN Lead Linguist
  3. Translator 2, who is also Reviewer 2
  4. Translator 3, who is also Reviewer 3
  5. Translator 4, who is also Reviewer 4

 

Challenges that we had:

1. Find out the perfect translation tools – Memsource

We chose to use MemSource, which is an online based translation software. The reason why we chose is are as follow:

  • Cloud based
  • Cheaper for small and medium size companies
  • Clear user interface

Here are two  screenshots of the project that we are working on via Memsource:

Here is the translation user interface.

Here is the translation user interface.

2. Determine the terminology

 

The first thing we have done is to coordinate with our client about the terminology. Questions like: do we need to translate our client’s’ name or not? We asked for the client for their confirmation. They sent us a previously translated Chinese article for reference so that we could see how the previous team handled the terminology translation. We created a simple style guide based on the previous translation and stick to the style guide for future translation.

3. Consistent Term Database (TB)

During our kick-off meeting, one of the most important things to mention to our translators is to stick to the term base.

4. Split up work among translators

The process that we are doing is: Translation → Editing + Review → In-context Review + DTP

The most important thing is to make sure that all the translations are reviewed by a different person and there will be a final person who will go through everything in-context and fix the inconsistencies.