How to deal with questions during a translation project

 

 

It is never easy to ask questions. As professionals, we might fear that people reading our questions think we should have known, or found, the answer ourselves. Many of us have also experienced translation project managers (TPMs) or clients ignoring the questions we asked, or at least not paying attention to all of them. It also takes time to write questions, check the answers, discuss some of the options and/or implement any subsequent changes.

 

Clients are sometimes swamped with work, do not have time to reply to questions, are not able to provide answers themselves or simply underestimate the value of this exchange process.

 

When translation projects go through translation agencies, project managers are sometimes completely inundated by the mountain of jobs they have to oversee simultaneously and could get annoyed by a high number of questions to sort out. They might overlook some or simply not invest enough time in dealing with them or even not relay them to the various project stakeholders.

 

In the article below, I explain what I believe are some best practices when dealing with questions, not only as a project participant (translator, reviser, DTP expert, tester, etc.), but as a project manager and client too. These are mainly based on what we do in our company and might not all apply to your own case.

 

Dealing with questions as a project participant

 

 

原文：

http://www.translatorsfamily.com/blog/for-translators/questions-during-a-translation-project.html