Smooth-running organisations generally have a single entity at the core to function as the driving force. At the Translation Centre, this is the role of the Operations Management Department.

This department consists of the following three sections:

• Workflow Management
• Advanced Language Solutions
• Specific Workflows and Terminology

Workflow Management Section

The Workflow Management Section (WMS) is responsible for the orderly processing of all language service requests at the Centre, from receipt of the request to delivery of the final product. The members of the section are responsible for:

• receiving, analysing and validating requests, and if necessary clarifying the scope of a request or negotiating deadlines with clients;
• assigning the different services requested by clients to in-house and freelance translators;
• ensuring that files for translators, terminologists and linguists are compatible with the language technology used at the Centre, and that clients’ final products have been correctly formatted prior to delivery;
• using and maintaining language technology tools for full pre-treatment of the files received;
• ensuring that all jobs are returned to the client by the deadline and in the required format;
• handling client feedback via the Corrected Version Request (CVR) functionality.

This section is also the business owner of the Client Portal.

WMS provides technical support to translators throughout the translation workflow. It further provides training courses in its various fields of specialism (e.g. CAT tools, subtitling, etc.).

Advanced Language Solutions Section

The Advanced Language Solutions Section (ALS) was set up with a view to harnessing the latest AI and language technology. It consists of:

• The Language Technology Team, which monitors trends and innovations related to linguistic services, analyses how the Centre can best help its clients meet their communication needs and develops and supports machine translation and automatic speech recognition services.
• The Interinstitutional IATE Group and the EurTerm (interinstitutional collaborative platform for terminologists) coordinator are hosted by the Centre on behalf of the IATE project partners.

Specific workflows and terminology Section

The Specific Workflows Section focuses on the development and coordination of specific workflows devised in response to clients’ needs, such as trade marks and designs for EUIPO. The TraMark team manages the end-to-end workflow for the translation of EU trade marks and designs, and the Terminology Management team coordinates terminology projects.