Team Work

[TopNotch]

Does this exist among translators or it is just splitting files and agreeing on terms? Some sort of examples from you maybe will make change my mind about it and I do want to think different...

[sabrina]

I have experienced true team work but it was in a University environment. Inside the library, us translators had a special room with proper computers and books (dictionaries of all sorts). It was a glass room, isolated from the remaining library. The door was closed and only translator students were allowed in. Given such optimal environment we would do our assignments consulting each other and helping ourselves all the time...I believe team work is possible but proper facilities are really a must...

[sarab]

hola sabrina! en donde estudiaste??? suena muy lindo el ambiente...

[sabrina]

Hola sarab!
Hice un curso de posgrado en la Universidad de Westminster, Londres. Tiene muy buenos cursos para traductores e intérpretes. Lo recomiendo!

[TopNotch]

Suena una excelente forma de trabajo... pero claro es un escenario ideal y académico

[reminder]

¡¡Podríamos probar!!

[Veronica]

I find MSN (or any chat client) to be convenient, since translators work from their homes or offices now, and sometimes I have teams with people who live very far from each other.
Anyway, gertting the team together working face to face would be the most convenient, consistent and fast.

[TopNotch]

I believe Veronica stated a very good different....
On one side we have communication among a translation team and in the other side is the scope of working as a team doing such an individual tasks as it is translating.
My question was aiming to the second statement and the idea is to define how many things we can share as translators so that we can actually work as a team.
I can think of the following:
- Style agreement
- Glossary updated
- TM sharing
- Reference sources agreement

and then? what else as a translator you will need to do your job....
Then.... I arrived to the following tough conclusion:

Translation team work is not required but only coordination of the translation job to consolidate that info with the usage of the communication tools that Veronica mentioned....

[sabrina]

I believe sharing glossaries and TMs is a very good start, however, true team work, as I understand it, is mainly debating a possible translation for a word, phrase or sentence according to context and giving grounds for your option, be it grammatical, semantical, sylistic, etc. So the best scenario is having the translating team sharing their views in the same working environment which is quite common in many places where there is a pool of in-house translators. A coordinator is also necessary, specially for large projects.

There's a place in Spain where literary translators basically move to a huge house for at least a month to share their queries regarding the book they have in process. Really very interesting! In my next post, I will let you know where this place is...