translation -- 2

It’s never easy to ask questions. As professionals, we might fear that people reading our questions will think we should have known, or found, the answers ourselves. Many of us have also experienced translation project managers or clients who have ignored the questions we asked, or at least not paid attention to all of them. It also takes time to write questions, check the answers, and discuss some of the options and/or implement any subsequent changes. Clients are sometimes swamped with work, don’t 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 must oversee simultaneously and could get annoyed if they receive a lot of questions to sort out. They might overlook some or simply not invest enough time in dealing with them, or perhaps not relay them to the various project stakeholders. Here I’ll explain what I believe are some best practices when dealing with questions, not only as a project participant (translator, reviser, desktop publishing expert, tester, etc.), but also as a project manager and client. These practices are based primarily on what we do in my company, so they might not be applicable to every situation