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How to create an MBO sheet for translators?
Thread poster: michael_1
michael_1
michael_1
China
Jul 24, 2013

Hi, I've been a translator for 10+ years and this is the first time I will be leading a team of translators. We belong in our own translation department in a big company. The company provides IT products and consulting services, so translation is not their main line of business.

Like every company, we get evaluated every year for our performance and based on that, we may or may not get a raise or promotion. We use what's called the MBO (management by objectives) sheet.

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Hi, I've been a translator for 10+ years and this is the first time I will be leading a team of translators. We belong in our own translation department in a big company. The company provides IT products and consulting services, so translation is not their main line of business.

Like every company, we get evaluated every year for our performance and based on that, we may or may not get a raise or promotion. We use what's called the MBO (management by objectives) sheet.

Usually, if you are in the sales department, you can set quantitative goals easily based on X amount of dollars or X amount of biddings won, etc. But if you work as a translator, most of the goals are qualitative. If we were forced to set some sort of quantative goals, what would they be?

I know some companies set daily or weekly quotas to each translators (i.e. a translation of X words per day), but if I show this to my manager, he can't tell whether these numbers are good or bad. Even I wouldn't want to assign daily quotas, since each person's skill and performance are varied, plus the materials one may work on could change how fast/slow the translator can handle in one day. You have to factor other things such as, the person may have had a headache that day, or something like that too.

Are there any other quantitative factors we can use to evaluate a translator's performance? Any input would be of great help. Thanks! ▲ Collapse
 


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How to create an MBO sheet for translators?







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