To paraphrase the slogan of the first translation conference promoted by GALA, “The Business of Language,” I would like to talk a little about this subject, with which we are all very familiar.
A great majority of people who do not work in the translation and localization industry do not realize the complexity that can be involved in our activities. Sometimes I feel a little alienated by people who do not work in our profession when I say that I work in translation. It seems like this industry does not deserve the due respect or cannot rely on an organizational structure such as the one we have at Ccaps.
For you to have an idea, take a look at our organizational chart:
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Are you getting an idea of the number of people needed for the machine to function? All with one common goal and aligned using the methods, processes and procedures that have been developed over these ten years of Ccaps activities.
At the top of the structure, we have the Board of Directors, made up of Fabiano Cid and Marco Simões. Fabiano occupies two positions as he is also the Managing Director, followed close behind by Cassius, Production Manager, and by Cecilia, Operations Director.
Fabiano is responsible for the sales and marketing departments. They acquire new clients and work on customer loyalty and prospects. They also make sure to get in touch with customers as soon as work is delivered asking them to answer a questionnaire of satisfaction. After all, quality and client satisfaction are paramount for our business. This is where Vanusa comes in as Customer Relations. She mainly serves domestic clients and coordinates their projects.
Cecilia is responsible for HR, finance and administration, and is assisted by Danielle and Rosiane. These two are responsible for accounts payable and receivable, organizing personnel and making sure that the office is fully stocked (including cookies for our coffee ;))
Cassius supports and manages the IT area and production per se. This includes everything, from team allocation to making sure that our Internet link is functioning properly, after all without this tool it would be impossible to work in a company whose clients are invariably out of the country and almost all communication is done by email. This is where Antonio enters the scene, our Network Administrator, who is also a localization engineer, but I am getting to that…
In the area of production, we have the heavyweights: global project managers, local project managers, project coordinators and linguistic coordinators. Members of this team include me and Adriana, who are GPMs (Global Project Managers) because we manage multilanguage projects, and Luana, who manages the so-called local projects. We count on the help from Anderson (who is going to get a firm talking to for not having added his profile to the blog yet), Tatiana and Shannon. They are the project coordinators that help me, Adriana and Cassius, respectively. We receive the projects, check internal and external resource availability, prepare project delivery timelines, distribute the workload among those involved in the tasks and control budgets, all while interfacing with the client, Ccaps and its resources.
The work of engineers, DTPers, translators and reviewers is the actual production. They are what I usually call the parts of the engine. On the frontline of these departments are Bruno and Eneida, who is a recent Ccaps addition referred by yours truly. While Bruno is responsible for the technical part of the projects as the localization engineering coordinator, Eneida is in change of linguistics, a more than necessary combination when it comes to localization.
All the parts of this machine work together to achieve a better result. The gears must work to produce a quality end product, of the lowest cost possible in the least amount of time possible. You think this is easy?
So, next time you hear that someone works at a translation company, remember that what we do is serious. Well, at least here at Ccaps… 
I almost forgot! The GALA conference that I mentioned in the beginning takes place this week, from September 14-16 in Cancun, Mexico. Would you like to catch an airplane that way? You can find more information here: http://www.gala-global.org/conference.
