Transcripts
1. Introduction & Course Overview: My name is Andre Sito and I'm the founder of
localization Academy. And that will also be your instructor
throughout this course. What you're going to
get in day one is pretty much introduction
to localization. Why? I think localization
is important to the world and some basics about how the industry operates. And then I'm going
to share with you my perspective on
project management. What I think it's
about and what I think makes a good project
manager in my opinion, they want is here to get you into the zone and understand
the bigger picture. So there are no
assignments in day one. It's, let's say the
most theoretical module out of the hole course. So I hope that you
will still enjoy it and learn something about localization and
project management. So thank you for watching this introduction to delocalization project
manager course, and I'll see you in
the next lesson.
2. Why The World Needs Localization: Before we get any deeper into localization and project
management specifically, I want you first to observe the world and when you do understand
how it functions. And I want you to
see the big picture because localization really fits into this big picture and helps the world
function as it is. A great example I can
give you is iPhone. Iphone is created by
smart people at Apple, located somewhere in
the United States. They think about the features, the design, the packaging, the website, the text, that should speak, and sell
the iPhone to the customers. Then the phone is actually manufactured in China
due to lower costs. And from China, it is
shipped to every part of the world where there
is demand for iPhones, where people want to
buy and enjoy iPhones. This phenomenon is
called globalization. So companies are no longer constrained by the
borders of the country. They don't have
to set up offices in every part of the world. They don't have to create the
iPhones in every country. They just think about
it in one place. In the United States. They haven't
manufactured in China. And from China, it
goes to all the stores around the world where
people can buy iPhones. Now the problem is that if you are in Japan or if
you are in France, people in Brazil, they don't want to use
iPhone in English. Most of them probably don't
even understand English. And even if they did
understand English, they probably would
prefer to use something that speaks to them in
their own language. So the smart people in
the United States at Apple's HQ who thought of
the features and design. They created it using
their native language. But iPhone reaches the customers
in their own language. So if you are in Japan, you want to use
iPhone in Japanese, you wanted to package to
speak to you in Japanese because if it's in English, you wouldn't even understand what the new features are about. You just see some nice package. Iphone, okay, It's a very nice, pretty product, but that
wouldn't be enough. People want to use the product
using their own language. And this is done
through localization, through the process
of localization. So we have one product that
is created in one location, in one language, and then we adapt this product to
different languages. So did the people
around the world. They feel like the product was created for them in
their own language. More sophisticated and maybe more interesting example
could be McDonald's burgers. If you ever traveled
outside of your country to maybe a more exotic place and you visited local
McDonald's there. You could have
find, you can have found some special burgers that are not sold anywhere in the world or at least
in your home country. I can give you example
for, let's say Japan. If you visit the Japan, you might have
scene on the menu. Let's say somewhere I
are teriyaki burgers. So the principle
here is the same. So McDonald's is saying selling, for example, Big Mac, every where in the world. But in this case with the sum
right and teriyaki burger, they wanted to create something
local which feels local. The big global chain like
McDonald's has created something very local specific
for the Japanese people, for the Japanese customers. So they edit some
local ingredients, may be fine tune
the flavors to it, more to Japanese costumers,
to Japanese audience. And then they're
selling it there. So the Japanese people feel
again like McDonald's has something done
specifically for them. Based on their
cultural traditions, based on their preferences, based on their
flavors and taste. Similar example could be
maybe in South America, if you have the burgers, instead of using teriyaki
or somewhere I burgers, you would have
maybe burgers with more salsa or with guacamole. So again, McDonald's would
adapt the typical big mag or other standard
burgers to cater to the South American flavors and taste by adding
these local ingredients. So this way, the big brands
like McDonald's that's selling burgers everywhere
around the world has done something for the local people. So they feel like McDonald's has created something only for them. Again, this is a more
sophisticated process of localization. Localization basically
means adapting product or service to a local audience so that the people in
different country, in different markets
around the world, they feel like their product
has been created to them. It speaks to them in
their own language. Now you as future
project managers, will not be probably having that much fun designing
the new big bag. But the principle is the same. I gave you two examples
of iPhone and a burger. But really if you look around your room and the things that
you're using on every day. There's localization everywhere, whether it's your
laptop or your PC, your phone, your
camera, your furniture. If you have furniture from Ikea, for example, all the different software that we
use on a computer. If there is a way for you
to change the language, that means there's
localization behind it. So localization, unless
something changes the world. And again, you need to, first of all see that the world is a global
place right now. Like there are no boundaries. Like it's very easy
to connect with someone and use
someone else's product if this thing changes and probably one chain
because it's more, the trend is more
towards collaboration. And if this keeps going on, there will be localization
needed all the time. Because We're localization
basically means is if somebody has great
idea, great product, or service somewhere
in the world, the first startup,
they think about it in their own native
language, let's say English. But then once the
product is really great, they wanna give this value to
everyone around the world. So that's where
localization comes and helps get this product
to every part of the world. So localization is definitely
not going anywhere. And this is one of the
reasons why companies need localization from
the economic perspective, the reason why companies are creative is to generate profit. Company has created something good and they started
selling it in, let's say, within the United
States or Canada, where people understand English, it's their main
primary language. Once they want our reach
customers, let's say Europe. And one day our product to be
sold in Germany, in France, in Italy, in the native language of the market, they
need localized. So localization
basically unlocks the growth potential
of a company. And that grow then
leads to more profit, which let's say justifies
the reason for localization, why companies want to
invest in localization. But I don't want you to
think about localization only because of money. A lot of the companies
exist because they give us something new, something innovative,
something valuable. And this innovation, this, this basically new future for us as people
wouldn't be possible, wouldn't reach everyone
around the world if there was no
localization happening. So this is why localization
is so important and why localization is pretty
much everywhere in the world.
3. Localization Industry Overview: We know that the companies
who want to grow, they need to localize your
products or services in order to be able to reach the local customers
in different markets. Now the question is, who does the localization? Where does the
Localization happens? And this is where
we need to make a very basic distinction between in-house and
outsourcing models. So let me ride. In-house. In-house model means is
that the localization is happening within
our own company. So I'll give you an example. Let's say we are the SLA. And Tesla creates their
website where they sell the electric
vehicles in English. Now, Tesla wants to reach customers in Europe
and in Asia as well. So they decide they want to localize this website in English in two
different languages, like let's say German branch, Italian, and
Japanese and Korean. Now, in the in-house model, it means that all
the localization, adapting the English
website into German, french, Italian,
Japanese, Korean. It will be done by the
employees of Tesla. So all the localization is happening within
their own company. So Tesla doesn't
need to work with external company to do the
localization for them. That's what the
outsourcing model is. In outsourcing model. As I already mentioned, we still have the
example of this law. So focused on their website, which is created in English. Now, this law does
not want to keep all these different translators
as their employees. Because maybe they don't
know if they're going to have so much
things to translate every month to justify why
they would have to pay these translators
and monthly salary and keep them on the payroll. So in the outsourcing model, this law only creates
the English website. And then they work would accompany or
companies called LSPs. Lsb stands for language
service provider or localization
service provider. And this is a company
that focuses on localization because it's
their core business. They have a lot of
different clients and ask them to localize something. So these guys might
actually have German, French, and Italian translators
as part of their stuff. Because again, they might
have different clients. And these clients, my son might
be sending a lot of work. So it makes sense to keep these
translators as the stuff. Now to LSP is a
provider for Tesla. They do to
localization for them. But there are cases where
the LSB actually also needs to outsource some
of the work because they don't have all the
translators in-house. So in this case, German, french, Italian, they would be
in-house for the LSP. Lsp does the German, french, Italian localization
in-house and then delivers it back to Tesla. But in many cases, the LSB also wants to keep
their staff kinda lean. And when it comes to
specifically to translation, they mostly work
with freelancers. Let's say in our example, the Japanese and Korean would
be done by freelancers. So in this case, the localization is
again outsourced. So Tesla outsources
the localization in the English website into five languages to
this LSB and us B decides to do three languages in-house with their employees and to outsource
Japanese and Korean, two independent freelancers. So the outsourcing model
also works this way. Fy in-house or outsourcing. It's not a term that's
specific to localization only it applies to any industry. Just to recap, it means
who is doing the work? Are we doing it within our company or our
employees doing it? In that case, it's an in-house. Are we asking
someone externally? That's outsourcing model? Now one of the reasons
why we want to outsource things
is in this case, it might be to save money to get the localization
Dan cheaper because the employees of Tesla
would probably be costing quite a lot rather than asking the LSP to do the
localization at better rates. Second thing is, as
I already mentioned, the workload on the, let's say create new
website every quarter and you only change a few
sentences on the website. You don't need to keep people on your staff as translators because they would have
nothing to translate. So then you're just wasting
money by paying their salary. So if you are outsourcing
the localization to an LSP, you only pay every time when you have the
need to localize. So that's another reason. The third thing might
be the know-how. Because the LSB is a company that specializes
in localization, They might help and be a
good advisor to Tesla. How to actually do
the localization of their website in a
more efficient way and do it, do it well. So this is in-house
versus outsourcing. As I mentioned,
majority of the time, localization happens through
the outsourcing model. Now, when it comes
to the companies, when it comes to LSPs, we have two types of LSPs. Mov, an SLB, MLB simply stands for
multilanguage vendor or multilingual vendor. So these are
companies that offer localization services
into multiple languages. In the previous example
that I showed you, Tesla, it goes to this LSB. And the LSB can cover
five different languages, or ten or 2030, whatever. On the contrary, we have SOV, which are typically smaller
companies very regional, that are only focusing
on one language because SOV stands for single
language vendor. So for some reason
they decided date, they only want to focus
on their own language. And throwback to the
outsourcing model. In many cases, the M
L of v can actually outsource some of
the work to auto SLPs or to freelancers. So it's not a surprise that the LSPs can work with each other on
some bigger projects. If the MLB thing is that the
SLB is a good partner for one language because
they're the ones specializing in the language and they're very proficient
in the language.
4. What Is A Project: Finally, let's start talking
about project management. Project management FYI is
about managing projects data. So maybe we should
first talk about what exactly is a project. You can find many
fancy definitions of a project on the Internet, but I will give you some
real-world examples very shortly. So for now, let me just try
to give you what I think are the three main
aspects of a project. First of all, project means
that we're doing something. Project is a set of activities
that need to be done. And once these
activities are done, we consider the project
to be completed.
5. Project Management Triangle: This is where we
left off last time. If you remember, I gave you a real-world example
of a project. In this case, we were
thinking of a dinner. What exactly needs to
happen for the dinner? Either if we're
organizing it for our friends or if we do it
as a service for someone. So this really is a great
illustration of what are the three R's are the
three components of a project that we
as project managers, need to be always aware of. And these are these are the activities
that we're doing or the dinner that we need to know what exactly we're
doing Core project. What is the first part? We need to know what exactly
we have to do for a project. Then the second part here is when we have to do those things. So that is the timeline, the start and the finish. And a final thing which
we haven't covered yet. But it's always there is how
much this is going to cost. So if you do this as a
service for someone, let's say, let's
stay with dinner. If you do this for someone as a service person, the client, we want to know how
much it's going to cost for you to
organize the dinner. But even if you're
just organizing the demon for yourself, you still need to think
about the cost, right? If you're going to have
a dinner for 20 people, you're going to have to
buy a lot more groceries and that's going to come
up into your pocket. So it's still going to
cost you something. Now, these three
things, the what, when and how much have a specific terms when it comes
to the project management. Let me write it again. Once. When how much what is referred to as scope? That is the scope
of the project. So what are the things
that we need to do as part of the project? When that is the time
component of a project, and how much that is
the cost of a project. Now, these three things are
always related to each other. There are interlinked. And we can put it like this. We have a scope here. You have the time here, and we have the cost here. Doesn't matter
where exactly this, this thing has a fancy
name called PM triangle. You don't need to remember this. But what I need you to
remember and to be aware of is that these things always
affect each other. So if one thing changes, it has effect on the outer
two, always, always. So to give you an example, the scope, let's
stick to the dinner. If we are organizing a dinner for two people and
suddenly we say, Oh, why don't we can
find a friend's. It's going to be 20 people. So it's Cope has increased. We need to cook more meals. Or people, maybe we need to run the bigger place to
fit all the 20 people. So what this means is
that the time in order to prepare these meals
and get everything done might increase as well. So the scope has
increased and as a result of time has
increased as well. We need more time
to get it done. And of course, the cost
will increase as well because we need
more grocery store, we need to buy more groceries. Maybe we need to hire some extra help to
help with the cooking. If you think about the time, let's say on the customer
and you're organizing. They didn't for me. And I say, I don't want to wait two weeks for you
to organize the dinner. I wanted tomorrow. So what would be
the impact of that? How will this affect the R2? So first of all, if you have less time, maybe you cannot do everything that was originally plants. So instead of doing
a fancy dinner, maybe I'll just buy you McDonald's and that's easy
because that's what I can do within the new reduce
time and the cost. If by any chance the scope
needs to still stay the same, maybe I need to work my *** off, maybe any extra help. So I'm going to
charge more for that. If you want, something
can be done faster, more urgently, the cost
might go in this way up. So the time goes down, but the cost might
go up as a result of that if the scope
stays the same. So this is the
three components of a project that you need to
be constantly aware of. Because projects
will keep changing, these parameters
will keep changing. Nothing is set in stone and
you need to always be able to react and analyze and think about how it
affects the other two. So scope, time and cost, always related to each other. They always affect each other.
6. Your Role As A Project Manager: In this lesson,
let's finally have a closer look at the role
of a Project Manager. What I think is the role of a project manager and how they help the project
to be successful, to meet project manager is sort of like a captain of a ship. You have so many
people working on the ship making sure
that it's running, making sure that the
guests are served well. You are there to orchestrate
everything together and interact with the
guests and make sure that the ship gets
to its destination. Ultimately, it's
your responsibility. The same thing can be
said about projects. Project is basically our ship and our goal is to make sure that successfully gets from start to finish in
order to get there, in order to know
what the project is about and when things
need to happen, we need to first of all, plan. Planning is one of the
key things that we do as project managers before
the start of the project, before we start doing things. Because without a plan, the project is likely
going to fail. Because if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. Now, when it comes to project, how the project looks like is the project goes through narrow talking about
localization project. The project goes through
different stages. Stage, you can think about it as a one activity that's happening in a certain
part of the project. And then once it's finished, the other activity can start. So in this case,
we have a project which starts with a translation, then it goes to a review, and then finally it
goes through testing, which is abbreviated SQL, which stands for
Quality Assurance. The project goes through these stages and one
follows another one. The idea with the
project is that the project manager doesn't
actually do these things. So for translation,
we have translators, people who are
professional translators, didn't we have
professional reviewers and then we have
professional testers. Unless there's a very
specific task that can only be carried out
by the project manager. Once the project manager
plan the project, it's up to other people on
the project to get it done. And this is a very simple
project with three stages. But imagine that this
project is actually done in two languages. So we would have
ten translators, we would have henry V worse, and we would have ancestors. So that's already 30 people that are working
on this project. And therefore, the role of a project manager is to
coordinate these people, to be helpful to them, to make sure that
they do their job? Well. The idea is that if the people working
on the project can do their job really well
and you can trust them. New job will be a lot easier. The real challenge for
our project manager is when things go wrong, they go not as planned. And I will get to that later. Now, what you need to
understand is that the translators are only interested in the
translation part. Most cases they will
not even know what's happening afterwards
for the translator, the project is just about
translation for the reviewer, it's only about the review. So these guys don't
care about the rest. It's not their responsibility
is your responsibility as a project manager to see
the project as a whole, as a set of all these
interrelated activities. Now, in many cases, there can be issues. Let's say the translation is delayed or a translator
is on vacation. So it is the responsibility of a project manager to
adjust to this projects. Many times they
don't go as planned. So the good project managers are the ones who can
adapt to the changes. That thing to the
changes is one of the key responsibilities
or project manager. And that's what makes the better project manager stands out, is how they can react to change, is how flexible they are, how they can adjust, and how
they can think on a spot. In order to get that, you need to have this
big picture vision. I would say. So, like I
already mentioned before, you need to see the
project as a whole. So not only focus
on translation, not focus only on review, but see what is the impact, what happens if
translation is late? What will be the
impact on the review? What will be the impact on
the pastures, and so on. We will learn how
to deal with this. So this is the picture. And then of course,
the projects, we do the projects
or our clients. Now the client doesn't
want to deal with indifferent translators,
reviewers are testers. The client only wants to
deal with one person. And that is the project manager. That is you. The project manager
is the main point of contact for the client when it comes to
doing project work. Then if there's some
new information, it's up to the project
manager to distribute the information to the team. But it also works the other way, Let's say the
translator or a viewer, they are not sure
about the meaning of a certain source string. So they asked the
project manager, they don't contact the client directly because like we said, the client doesn't want to
deal with 30 different people. So the project manager is there to facilitate this
communication. And the project
manager is actually in the center of the communication
between the client, in-between all the
project members that are working on the project. And sometimes the Project
Manager can help, can answer the
question on their own. And you got to times
the project manager has to go back to the client
and ask for a question. So these are the key
roles that I think. First of all, it's planning, which we will be doing
a lot very soon. Then it's communicating and
coordinating with team. Because like I said, the actual work is done
by other professionals, not the project manager. So the way that the
project manager does the project is through
communication with other people. Then third one is
being able to adjust, to react to changes, and then communicating
with the client. You are a good
project manager if the client can just relax, send your project and trust you, or that you will
deliver on time. Building a trust is one of the important things
that happen over time. It's more of an advanced thing when we think about the
role of a project manager. But trust this one
thing that you can build with your client and you should build
it with the client. Because if the
client needs to put more effort into making sure
that the project gets done, it means you're not
doing your job well. Sometimes we do need
the help of a client, but the good project
managers are the ones who, who do most of the work before they go ask for help the client.
7. What Makes A Good Project Manager: In this lesson, I want
to share with you my personal traits that I think are important for
good project manager. If you want to stand out,
It's good to be able to have the sum of these I think
you just need to have. And some of them, I
think you can learn by practice and practice
and learning. Number one, I would say
is self organization. This project
managers, you will be dealing with a lot
of different people, with a lot of different clients. And all of these people send
some information to you. You might be dealing with many, multiple different files
into different languages. You can be running multiple
projects at the same time. So that's why I think if
you know how to clean, how to keep all
this information, all these projects tidy, clean so that you can easily find what
you're looking for. So your self-organized
that I think is a very good prerequisite to
be a good project manager. Because if you can
organize yourself well, then it means you can probably organize other people easily. But if you like mass, if you like chaos, then you're going to struggle
with project management. Because project
management is also about making decisions
based on the information. So you need to be on
top of the information, all the information that
has been passed onto you. Number two, I would
say is communication. Of course. We
already talked about the fact that the projects are not done by you as
a project manager, you work with many different
people and they are the ones who work on the task. They are the ones who deliver the little parts of the project. So in order for us
to get it done, we need to communicate
with these people. That's how a project
manager gets a project done by communicating with the people who can do
the job better than us. So we work with experts
like translators, engineers, DDP, people,
gestures, and so on. And we do it is
through communication. Then the next level is
communicating with the client, making sure that the client feels they are
being served well, that there are understood, that we ask and communicate
in a nice professional way. And the same goes for
actually working with anyone. So communication is the way how we get things done
through communication. Number three, I would
say is medium picture. And I'll explain to you what I mean by medium picture and
why it's at a big picture. Let me start by saying what
I consider a small picture. In many different cases, you can have translators
or engineers who have moved to the rank
of a project manager. But there are still too
much attached and focus on that one part of the project which they have
so much experience in. So for example, a translator who has moved to a project
management role would be checking in the translation
quality too much while neglecting the outer
parts of the project. So as a project manager, we need to look at
the project as a whole and see how each part, how each task
affects the others. At the end, the outcome is positive and the
project is successful. If we are too much for QC from micro-managing one
part of the project, but ignoring the outer
parts of the project, then it means we are not working on the
project correctly. Then the opposite end of the
spectrum is big picture. And what I consider
the big picture is really going beyond the project. Understanding why client
wants to localize something. Who is the actual end user
of what we're localizing. For example, the
people who are using the iPhones instead of the Program Manager at
Apple who gives us work. Okay, so it's
understanding the product, understanding how the
product helps the world. What is the culture of the
client being really like? High level and
understanding the work that we do and how it helps
to impact the world. Because through
that, you can become more of a collaborator
like a team member with your client
instead of just being a client and somebody who
does projects for them, then in the middle is what
we have the medium picture. And so that to me is
somewhere between, so you don't see the project and localization as art
of the big picture, the world, how the world works, how it affects the world. But you're also in that
micro-managing and you're not too focused on one
certain part of a project. So medium picture means that
you view the project as a set of interrelated tasks
that affect each other. And you can prioritize correctly and you
can work with it, and you can make sure that
the project moves smoothly. And now finally, the new thing, which I added based on my experience from the very
first boot camp is numbers. There are so many numbers that we deal with as
project managers, whether it's the budget, we need to calculate
the word count, but the dollar value
amount of it on top of it, project managers are responsible for the finances of the project. And then when it
comes to scheduling, when are people doing something? How long does it take?
That's also all. Everything is numbers. So we deal a lot with numbers. So if by any chance, you are scared by numbers and you don't want
to deal with numbers. And unfortunately, I think that project management
will not be for you because we deal
a lot with numbers. The mat behind the
numbers is very simple. But you should be
good with numbers.
8. Project Manager As Part Of A Team: Now let's talk about the different type of people
that you'll be working with as project managers or the different roles that
you can come across with. First of all, we've talked about translators and reviewers. So these are language
professionals. So they are the ones doing translation and doing
linguistic review. Then you can have next is localization engineers
abbreviate S, L, E. So these are the
technical experts who sometimes for a
more complex projects, you might need
their help in order to prepare the files
for translation. Let's say when we have
some DTP heavy files or you have a website which
needs to be localized. There will be more
sophisticated process in order to start a
translation of the website. And this is where the
localization engineer would be helpful to you. One type of localization
engineer could be DTP engineer, and DTP stands for
desktop publishing. And what this means is
these are people who basically make things pretty. Think about having
some brochures or PDF files which
have a nice layout. And usually after the
translation is completed, the layout is completely broken. The texts are overlapping, that it's not very nice. So the DTP people
come in and they use tools like Adobe
design or frame acre, and they make things
back to pretty. Sometimes you can also
have the DTP engineer working on something
related to website. Or usually there's some graphics
or nice fonts involved. Then we have QA people, you're already talked about it. So QA stands for
Quality Assurance. These are basically testers. So typically when we have localization of
software or website, once you translate the website, you want to make sure that
it's still functional, that everything is
working fine and links are fine, the
images are fine. So that's when you would
send that to a tester. Or for example, if the B2B
person and create some PDF, you might want to
have it checked by a tester who is native to that language or
understanding language and can quickly review and look at the formatting
and say if it's correct. So these are QA people, testers. Then another role that we
have is a vendor management. So VM vendor managers are the people who
are responsible for dealing with the external
people that we're working with. So, for example, translators and reviewers in most
cases are freelancers. So the role of the
vendor management is to recruit these
external people, to test them, and to make sure
that the project manager, when the project manager hasn't need to use a
certain translator, let's say we're starting
a new exotic language, let's say Thai translation. The vendor manager is
the person who would be looking for Thai translators. And the vendor manager is also responsible maybe for payments to the people and some
escalating issues. Then we have sales
or account managers. So this could be two
different roles. Salespeople are, of course, the people who are out there
trying to find new clients. They're selling the services
and they're bringing new projects for us to
work on. An account. Managers are sometimes
salespeople, sometimes they are very
experienced project managers. These are the people
who will be working on very large programs for
significant clients. I'll give you an example. Let's say the
client is Facebook. Facebook is a big, big company and they
have multiple products. Like let's say that the
Messenger, instagram. And they have, I don't know, the Facebook feed on its own. So these are big
products on their own. So if there were localized and we are working here
in this company. So this is the LSP. The Facebook Messenger
would be localized by one P M here. Then maybe Instagram by
another beam or team of PMs. And the Facebook by Anna PM. The role of the manager is
actually to be somewhere here. And dealing with someone
on the Facebook site. Typically a localization
manager who would then also be overseeing all the localization
on the Facebook side. So one person from the LSB, one person from Facebook. This is really like the
high level discussion, n, sales management. And then finally we
have some managers. So people who are mostly interested in having their employees be successful.
9. How Does A PM Interact With VM?: One of the questions that
I recently received in one of the boot camps is to further, or maybe better explain how does the vendor manager interact
with Project Manager? What is their relationship? So as you know, project managers are dare to utilize the talent of
other people who are, let's say better linguists translated as
reviewers or better. I don't know the TPP, but localization
engineers and so on. So when it comes to finding this talent that is
outside of our company. So the external partners, freelancers or other agencies. The role and the goal of
finding these external partners that you as a project
manager can work with is the role of
a vendor manager. Okay, so anyone that's outside of your company
that you're working with. So typically freelancers for all the different
languages, right? Most of the companies don't actually employ
in-house translators. They outsource that work. They have a pool of vendors that they work with that you as a
project manager, send your request to. So that's the role of a
vendor manager to find the right people that will be willing to work
with your company. And then you as a
project manager can send them your projects. Okay? So normally when
you join a company, unless you're joining a very, very fresh company,
they will already have some vendor database. This is all list of all the vendors that are
working with your company. The vendor manager has
negotiated the rates. The rates are in their system. So how much we're paying for the freelancers, for the vendor. So freelancers and agencies, how much we're paying
for their services, for which languages with
kind of services they do. And maybe the system
also includes something like rating system in the more advanced competence, I would say because you can have different experience
with the vendors. Okay. Just because somebody pass the initial test and they become onboarded and became
part of the vendor database. It doesn't mean that they actually stayed
there for, right? If they underperform, then
they can also be removed from the vendor database and then you wouldn't send them any projects any longer because they're
not actually good vendors. So how does the
interaction work with? First of all, if you
get a new request for for new language, let's say you only do, I don't know European
languages for your client. And suddenly the client
asks you, Hey, by the way, can you also do Japanese, Korean, and simplified
and traditional Chinese? Then this is where
you might want to consult with the vendor manager. First. First of all, maybe you would look into the database, but maybe it's better to discuss with the vendor manager
and tell them that, okay, what kind of
clients you have, what is their industry? What kind of content-based send and see if they
can help you find the right people that the
company has already onboarded. So the vendors that we're
already working with, but you just haven't
worked with them yet for this project or
for this client. Or in case when you really
need someone special, let's say, I don't know,
your company always does. I don't know IT or
marketing translations. And suddenly somebody comes
to you with a gaming project. For gaming, you really
need someone who has experience with the
gaming industry and knows the gaming jargon and is maybe a gamer themselves
because gamers are better translators for games than just normal professional translators who have
never played a game. So that's when you might want to come to your vendor
manager and say, Hey, I have this new
project coming in. I need you to find me some
people for these languages. Maybe this will be the rates
that we're looking at. And then they go and
try to hire the people. When I mean hire the people, it means kinda like recruit them to become
contractors, okay. They're not hiring
the best employees. If we're talking about
having in-house linguist, that's I think would be that would be
probably the role of your typical HR HR recruiters
who are looking to hire internal employees versus hiring looking for contractors. That's rollover vendor manager. So that it would be one
instance where you will interact with the vendor manager in case you meet someone. And another example could be that I already
mentioned to you. The vendor manager, is there, their role is there to also monitor the performance
of the vendors. Did the vendor manager
hired in the first place? And so for debt, they would need your feedback
because the vendor manager. When they find someone, they probably give
them some tests. Then they negotiate the rate and then they're
added to the system. But like I mentioned to you, a lot of the times the
initial tests can say, can be very positive, very good. And you think that these
vendors will work. But once the production people, so you as a project manager
start working with people, maybe we'll find out that
their communication lags, they are laid with their
deliveries and so on. So ideally you want to have
some sort of a mechanism, how you as a project
manager can enter your experience with the
vendors into some system where kinda like aggregates
so that not only you but also other different
project managers submit their feedback. And then the manager,
vendor managers should be monitoring all this feedback and evaluate if the vendors are doing their job well or if
there are underperforming, can either underperforming,
maybe they might want to reach to you
as course of details. Or if there are some
really serious issues, I don't know some
quality issues. Maybe the client has
escalated and report some issues that nobody
from team of freelancers, let's say the translator or
the reviewer didn't catch. Then maybe they
might want to set up some call to clarify
these issues, workup, some correction plan
with the vendor, and then see if they
improve or not. And if they don't improve, maybe that's the time where the vendor manager
tells them that, okay, we are not going to
work with you anymore. Or maybe sometimes they can
do is simply mark them in the system as do not send
projects with this person. But they will
officially not cease their partnership
with this freelancer because maybe they're afraid of some backlash or
something like that. So these ethane would be
the two main scenarios where you as a
project manager would be working with
vendor management. Number one case, when you need to find someone
you because you as a project manager
shouldn't do it. I mean, if you're
working for some really, really small company
when there's, where there's no, let's
say not enough work. Or one dedicated vendor manager. Maybe that's where you as a project manager
also need to do some, let's say, searching for talent, searching
for freelancers. But in, let's say
medium or even larger, smaller or larger companies, you would probably want
to have vendor manager to deal with all these freelancers.
That is case number one. Number two, when it
comes to the performance and rewarding or
punishing the vendors. So that is my addition
to this lesson. So this is sort of
like to give you an extra context in
case I miss something. Or it's based on what the
students used to ask me, either during the live sessions, during the boot camps or
just now through Discord. That's it.
10. What's Next For You?: Alright, that's the end of the free mini-course
that I have created. Hopefully you have learned something new about
the industry, about the role of
a project manager and what I think
it's important to have if you want to succeed as a localization
project manager. This is all based on my
experience working as a PM in the industry
for many, many years. So thank you for spending
the time with me. Hopefully it was worth it. If you would like to take your training to the next level, if you're really interested in the role of a localization
project manager, please come visit localization academy.com, which I started. It's plays where I teach, let's say the full course about becoming a project
manager in localization. And that's where you're going
to get nine more days of training and you're going to learn everything
about doing analysis, calculating, adjusted
the word count is creating a budget, making a schedule, and how to communicate and coordinate
with your team. So really the basics to give you an idea and a practical idea and experience of how it is to be a localization
project manager. So again, thank you for watching this mini-course and hope to
see you in our community. Bye bye.