During my Master’s degree in University College Cork, I took part in a Simulated Translation Bureau. University College Cork is a part of the INSTB, and provides students with a real world-like experience by running a made-up “translation bureau”, where we learn how translation agencies work hands-on for most of the second semester of the programme.

Each STB was a group of two to three people. I found myself with Italian, Irish and Spanish speakers– and everyone spoke English. This gave us a good coverage of languages, and having Irish was a very good asset, as we were the only STB to be able to provide services in that language (though this does mean our Irish speaker was maybe a bit overworked)!
In my case, I ended up having very little translation work to do, as only a few projects had French translation tasks. Instead I specialised in project management, website management, and ensuring we had good internal protocols for handling projects.

Website creation

I used Hugo as a Content Management System for creating the website. I decided to create my own website template using it, as I have already done a few (including the one I am using for the website you are currently on!), and that would allow the STB to have its own distinct identity. The content of the website was hosted on Codeberg, in order to allow other team members to edit it using their online editor, though in practice I was the only one to maintain the website.

The website is still available at gianosa.n0va.cc for you to check out!

This let me practice web content creation and publishing, including the creation of a banner image based on OpenStreetMap and edited in Inkscape, though the logo was made by another team member.

Project management

My other main task was project management, which I handled through the Google Workspace suite. I mainly used Google Sheets to keep track of projects, invoices and quotes (the latter two I also designed myself!).

I created project templates and project “information sheets”, made to guide other team members through the life-cycle of projects, in order to not miss important steps. In the first few projects we handled, we sometimes forgot to record some information or inform clients of important steps, which I included in the template for later projects. In order to make it easier for other team members to use my project management system, I also created rudimentary automation scripts using Google App Engine.

Results

Overall, our STB was fairly successful. Despite a flat hierarchy (which is sometimes hard to maintain well!), we managed to deliver good results to customers.

Using my experience in the STB and reflecting on my current skills as a translator and linguist, I did a SWOT analysis: