My name is Gabriella Ascari and my job in Albatros is to do with Project Management. Although I hold a degree in Interpreting and though I double as a translator within the company, I have always been a Project Manager, ever since the company started and since before I knew what it involved.
So, to make my 12-year experience in this field available to whomever is interested, today I’ll be starting a new section of this blog focused on Project Management as a way of life — so to speak.
Before I delve into one of the areas of PMing that are part of my everyday routine, however, I should perhaps describe our individual vantage point. Because while Albatros is by no means a large company, we do have to deal with some of the same issues that large multi-language vendors deal with on a daily basis (eg. assessing turnaround times, assigning jobs to internal and external resources, receiving and sending queries, etc.).
On the other hand, though Albatros is not necessarily small by some standards, we do have quite a few things in common with freelancers and with their relationship with clients (eg. obtaining the material we need to carry out a translation job, negotiating deadlines, making sense of translation kits that baffle any attempt to make head or tail of them, etc.).
So in this light, and with no intention of naming names or making my blog entries too heavy or irking, I’m planning to share some of my daily mishaps and endeavours while Project Managing through this blog. Hopefully, it will be interesting. If not, I hope it will at least have been therapeutical.
Hello Gabriella,
It’s very nice that you intent to write from the PM’s perspective. This is a subject that interests me very much. I am a freelance translator, and learning about PM’s needs and opinion would serve me well. Usually PMs are very busy people and there’s little opportunity to talk to them on a daily, weekly basis or that’s the impression I have.
I would like to encourage you to continue in that direction 🙂
Thank you for this post,
Tomasz
Thank you Tomasz, this is what I intend to do!
I too have to deal with PMs on a daily basis and sometimes coping just makes you want to scream. Writing this blog is an excuse for me to raise my head above the hubbub of my daily routing and look at it from a less involved (and hopefully more objective and useful) point of view.
Many thanks for your encouragement!