Interview with Alba Jiménez Cereceda, Project Manager at Mondo Services

Interview published on the 10th of January 2012, carried out on the sixteenth of December two thousand and eleven in Madrid

Question: How long have you been with Mondo Services and, briefly, what does your work as a project manager consist of?

Answer: I started work at Mondo Services towards the end of October 2009 doing an internship whilst I was finishing my studies in translation. After ten months they offered me a job in the company in the role of project manager.
The project manager handles everything to do with coordinating projects, in my case, mainly interpreting services, dealing with clients and negotiating projects with companies and professional interpreters, as well as other administrative tasks.

Question: With regard to the interpreting service offered by Mondo Services, what can you tell us and what exactly does it consist of?

Answer: Our interpreting service fulfils the need for linguistic support that our clients have in various contexts such as meetings, conferences and in many different encounters in which the participants do not share a common language. We offer interpreting services, mostly in Europe, but also further afield and we have a large team of professional interpreters which allows us to guarantee a high quality, highly professional service. Personally, quality is what I’m really interested in. We try to offer a service that is favourable to our clients but which also conforms to the needs of our interpreters and guarantees them a decent living.

Question: What do clients normally ask for when they request an interpreting service? What type of interpreting to they require and, above all, in what type of situations?

Answer: The most common ones are usually business meetings or meetings for companies who have branches abroad and so need to communicate with them. There are also training courses or conferences and seminars. For meetings we usually offer a liaison interpreting service, or sometimes consecutive. We also offer consecutive interpreting for training within companies whereas simultaneous interpreting tends to be more sought after in conferences and seminars, in larger scale projects. The larger the project, the more chance there is that the simultaneous mode will be used since it provides more flexibility.

Question: How does the search for interpreters and the contact between the interpreter and the client work?

Answer: Firstly, we compile the information we need form the client, that is, all the information about the project, and then we select the most suitable interpreter, bearing in mind the specialism required and their experience. We contact the interpreter, who could either be a frequent collaborator with us or an interpreter we have not yet worked with. When it comes to first time collaborations we usually find the interpreter through professional associations or contacts, we then carry out certain checks on them (a telephone call, reference search, carefully examining their CV etc.). After that, if we haven’t worked with them before, the negotiation with the interpreter begins, during which stage the price is established. Once the client has accepted our quote we can confirm the job for the interpreter. From this moment onwards, the client can contact the interpreter to provide him/her with more details, send material with which to prepare for the work and finalise the logistics of the job. In any case, we also always carry out a monitoring process in order to be sure that everything is going to plan and to sort out possible problems or changes.

Question: Is it often difficult to find interpreters and does it vary according to the languages required?

Answer: It very much depends on the language combination and on the location where the interpreting service is to be provided. If, for example, we need an interpreter in Madrid with a language combination like English and Spanish, we tend not to have any problems because there are a lot of interpreters with that combination. But if we are talking about less common languages in different countries or cities, it's a different story. Imagine, for example, a Catalan interpreter in Korea.

Question: How does the service change depending on the country where the interpreting is required?

Answer: Each country has its own market and so we have to adapt our offer to each one. Prices tend to vary, as does the way we offer the service. What does stay the same with our services, regardless of the location, is our quality and professionalism. Each country has different market models, the market in France is not the same as the market in the United Kingdom and the market in Spain is not the same as the German market. For this reason the prices are different in each one. We offer most of our services within Europe, but we also have an international presence. For example, we have worked in countries such as Brazil and Turkey and we have received requests to offer interpreting services in the USA and in Saudi Arabia.

Question: Let’s now talk a bit about the Mondo Lingua Initiative, what can you tell us?

Answer: Mondo Lingua is an initiative which supports non profit, charitable projects and has been developed by Mondo Services. In terms of its function, it’s an independent initiative but it is sponsored by our company. It offers free translations to NGOs, particularly focussing on voluntary translations of associations’ web pages. We have a large number of volunteers who want to help associations in need of translations. It’s a way of helping them to spread their message to people who otherwise, they would be unable to reach. This initiative is supported, on the one hand, by associations which need translation services and which, at the same time, help us to spread our initiative, the volunteers who help us to be able to provide these translations and, on the other hand, by Mondo Services, which provides the means and staff without which it would be impossible to manage the projects.

Question: When was this initiative conceived and, more importantly, why?

Answer: The initiative was conceived in 2009, in February 2010 the web page was created and the project began to gain more and more relevance. The basic idea was still the same as when it began, that of helping associations who didn’t have the means to publicise their activities in several languages. And at the same time, to help students needing to gain experience in the world of translation and who were unable to do so in any other way; a way of practising, collaborating and being acknowledged. Mondo Services wanted to invest money which had been earmarked for publicity in something useful for others and that was how Mondo Lingua was born.

Question: How do you find the associations?

Answer: The initiative has been very successful, particularly on the internet, so it has quickly been able to become a project which is relatively independent from the commercial agency. The web page offers all the necessary information associations need to sign up. Through the webpage, they can contact us by filling in a form. Word of mouth has also helped us a great deal, the associations that have worked with us often speak to others and recommend us and in this way more people get to know about us.  Thanks to the internet, we have over 1000 volunteers who work with us from locations all over the world. The associations that take part, work in various sectors and fight for different causes. The fundamentals of the initiative set out some important requirements, like the fact that we only work with non profit associations or generally useful ones which promote values and issues which we consider just and respectable. For this reason, we support causes such as social justice, human rights, protection of the environment and helping those people who are most in need, for example, refugees, or those who need to improve their living conditions in other countries. Essentially, we choose those associations that help others or that want to spread a particular message or project and inform the world about it. Any projects that we think are useful and that are promoting a just cause.

Question: What is the profile of a volunteer?

Answer: Our initiative is possible, most of all, thanks to the large number of collaborators who work with us. In this sense we have grown considerably. It has surprised us to see how, in a short period of time, we have gone from just over 200 “volunteers” to over 1000 and we receive new requests every day. There are different types of volunteers; on the one hand we have professional translators who are committed and want to help, offering part of their time to offer a free service. On the other hand, university students studying translation or modern languages, who want to gain experience in this way and to contribute what they can. There is also a third profile, people who, for different reasons use more than one language to a high enough level and can offer translations. They tend to be bilingual people, those who have spent a long period of time abroad or even those who live permanently in other countries. In any case, we always take great care to evaluate the requests of each one of our collaborators before adding them to our database. Because, even though it’s true that we are not offering a professional service, this doesn't mean that it is not a correct service. We also have internal collaborators who help with proofreading and organising the projects, in order to allow everything to stay completely voluntary. One of the things we ask of associations is that they name the volunteer and the initiative. This is an incentive for translators, who see an acknowledgement for their work, something which, in the world of translation, is unfortunately not always the case. Another distinguishing feature of our initiative which I think is interesting is the opportunity we offer volunteer translators to have a web page built, as a way of saying thank you on behalf of Mondo Lingua. 

Question: Do you already have or have you ever thought about the idea of offering voluntary interpreting services?

Answer: Honestly, we have thought about that idea and how we could make it a reality. What’s more, the associations have shown a lot of interest. However, so far we haven't been able to set it up, although we have volunteer interpreters available in several cities in several countries. There are a few difficulties, particularly at the logistical level, as it's difficult to find an interpreter offering a voluntary service in the exact city in which the association requires it. For the interpreting projects it has been possible to carry out with associations so far, it has not been possible to offer them completely free of charge through Mondo Lingua.  We will try to take this idea forward in a more concrete way in order to be able to fulfil the need for interpreting services too.

Finally, if you are interested, we encourage you to visit our initiative’s webpage for more information and of course, to collaborate with Mondo Lingua!

Best wishes to you and thank you.