Translation Progress Tracking and the Ethics of Efficiency

Poor translation team management, resulting in inefficient work and slow progress, is unethical. Could a seemingly insignificant adjustment to team management practices produce greater efficiency gains than even the adoption of AI or other technical strategies? This paper presents the results of a pilot study with over a dozen translation teams, from seven countries, testing whether daily progress tracking (using a tool called TranTrak), by itself, can lead to increased efficiency. Results show that this simple practice–tracking team time, effort, and progress each day–lead to efficiency gains of up to 78%.

This paper further illustrates one application of the granular data available from tracking translation progress. This data, giving a detailed picture of pace and effort for a translation team, can help a team optimize their translation process. This paper will present data showing how small tweaks to a translation team’s process can lead to efficiency gains of over 75% while maintaining quality.