Technology

Such technologies help us to achieve the best results for your projects. The task of translators, proofreaders and indeed the whole team is to carry out a project completely in accordance with the specific requirements of that particular task.

Any linguistic service is a special fusion of professionalism, qualifications, skills and talent. Technology aims to balance these four components within the framework of a single project being carried out by several people.

Freelanguage usage of technology mirrors our Freelanguage approach.

To get the best results we adhere to the following principles with regard to technology:

Dividing

The staff at Freelanguage is divided into three departments as described on the 'Project Management' page.

Technology influences the division of staff according to their roles in project work. Customer relations are managed by customer account managers, while production issues are the responsibility of the project managers in the production department.

This strategy is aimed at dividing the managers functions and liabilities: for the project managers in the production department there in just the one customer — the customer support team, and for the customer support team there is just the one performer of tasks — the production department.

Interaction between the two departments is performed in the form of standarised documents and requests such as internal project orders, assignments and descriptions.

Standard procedures

Every project is unique but the same set of procedures applies to it. The first reason for this is the unified project management itself, which requires the same set of records, documents and information about each project.

The second reason is purely a matter of organisation, since standardised working procedures are in place to govern relations between devisions, project managers and proofreaders.

This provides the basis for an habitual work arrangement, where the work of every individual is a personal contribution to the work of the team, and all the parts should be easily assembled at any stage.

Prevention

The first two technological principles are also integral to the third — 'Prevention is easier than cure'.

Freelanguage utilises the experiences, knowledge and successful practices gained from working on past projects to foresee any potential difficulties and situations that might arise with future projects. We analyse the technological process of each project in order to be better prepared to deal with similar situations in the future.

We apply the following preventive measures to each project without exception:

1. Each task must be clear and univocal;
2. Explanations have to be fully understood;
3. The use of reference materials is obligatory;
4. We share information to help each other.

Step-by-step delivery

This is primarily a preventive measure, but only in part, as it is only used to attain two goals: firstly in order to control work while it is in progress and avoid reworking later on (preventive) and secondly to divide the project work up to avoid overloading and extreme work. A normal workflow is preserved with most projects.

Some processes (such as translating and proofreading) can be done simultaneously even for urgent projects, however, because we have less time at our disposal we have to be better organised.