In group work it’s always essential to ensure flawless coordination and to be able to discuss and take decisions quickly. To achieve this, I always choose the individuals who will collaborate with me very carefully, ensuring that there is trust and a sense of agreement between us.
Before we started the translation, we all met together to examine the text and to set the parameters for the style we would adopt. The texts were aimed at a young audience aged 14 to 24. Our language and style ought to be appropriate to them. So we decided to use the singular instead of the polite plural in Greek, so that our communication with the public was more direct and friendlier in tone. Of course, we had to use the same terms and also avoid complex, pompous and scholarly expressions. Our slogan was: simple, direct, friendly, comprehensible and attractive.
We then divided up the sections that each team member would undertake to translate and created an online terminology file to which all three of us had access. We managed to ensure a basic uniform approach to the entire volume of text so that the style did not change every time the translator changed. We were also in constant contact with each other so that we could take collective decisions about any issues or linguistic challenges which arose during the course of the translation.
Having completed the translation, I collected all the individual sections into a single document and edited all the texts. This editing process is a necessary step in cases where the work is allocated to more than one person so that the individual sections can be brought into line with each other. In doing so, I ensured that the style, language approach and other translation parameters were the same across the whole text.
