Friday, March 10, 2017

MSDS project?

This stands for Material Safety Data Sheet. The topic covers chemicals and the like, safety is the utmost coverage in this. We are recently running this MSDS project. We got 4 batches to cover. We mean to handle. Each batch consists of great amount of words, totalling 150,000 words and more with days deadline (1, 2, 3, ands so on). We like challenge and we take this challenge.

Other similar company might think that this is crazy, but we are surely converting. We are converting our notion that our burden has its own limit and we have the power to penetrate the limit. We surely do.

MSDS project means 1) expert translator, 2) experienced translator, 3) deep research, 4) pay-attention-to-detail editor. Handling this MSDS project is a real challenge to us. The number of words is so huge and the deadline is so tight. You can imagine yourself. For the first batch of 50K words to handle, the project was smoothly handled. We just handled the translation and easy formatting. The first batch was in MS WORD format and thus, it was easy for us to import them directly into Trados, export them to finalize and format them in bilingual version. We DO NOT do PDF conversion. In this, we did translation, editing, and formatting with no hassle.

And the game was on. We received subsequent batch in PDF files and we need to convert them before we can translate them. The case is not the conversion only, but the conversion is not always suggesting good format in WORD and thus, we need to match everything between original file (PDF file) and MS WORD file as often, the structure is upside down. This is another case.

We found, in subsequent batches, PDF files with bad format. We have to re-format them and this means that we have:

1) PDF files of thousands of words to convert
2) Super tight deadline to cope with
3) Conversion job to do
4) Formatting before and after translation

We need a good scenario in handling this super challenging job. Today, we have 36K words to handle and we are provided with 4-day deadline. We need to deliver the final result this Saturday, March 11, 2017 and this can't be handled by one person, so we decide to make a scenario like this:

1) 2 translators, each handles 20K and 16K
2) 2 editors (in-house)
3) 3 formatters, two in-house and one freelance formatter
4) 2 final checkers (in-house)
5) Providing extra time (working overtime to make deadline)

We think that this scenario is effective from any perspective. First, we do not compromise quality, second, we can make the deadline, third we meet client's requirement. What is beyond this will be a force majeure, so we also prepared plan B just in case of missing scenario. Wish us luck!



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