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Key Responsibilities and Required Skills for Written Translation Coordinator

💰 $ - $

LocalizationTranslationProject ManagementLanguagesContent

🎯 Role Definition

The Written Translation Coordinator oversees the end-to-end coordination of written translation projects, ensuring timely delivery of high-quality localized content across products, marketing, legal and technical domains. This role blends project management, vendor and freelancer coordination, linguistic quality assurance, terminology management, and platform administration (CAT tools and localization platforms) to support scalable translation operations and maintain consistency across multilingual content. The ideal candidate drives continuous process improvement, enforces SLAs and style guidelines, and liaises closely with stakeholders (product, marketing, legal, engineering) to prioritize content, manage budgets, and mitigate localization risks.

📈 Career Progression

Typical Career Path

Entry Point From:

  • Localization Specialist / Junior Localization Project Manager
  • Bilingual Content Editor or Translator
  • Project Coordinator with language specialization

Advancement To:

  • Senior Localization Manager / Localization Program Manager
  • Global Content Operations Manager
  • Head of Localization or Director of Translation Services

Lateral Moves:

  • Vendor Management Lead (Language Services)
  • Content Operations Manager
  • Product Content Strategist (multilingual focus)

Core Responsibilities

Primary Functions

  • Manage end-to-end translation and localization projects from intake to delivery, including scope definition, resource allocation, timeline creation, and status reporting to internal stakeholders and external vendors.
  • Coordinate and communicate with internal stakeholders (product managers, content strategists, marketing, legal, engineering, UX) to prioritize translation requests, clarify source content, define target locales and approve deadlines that align with product and go-to-market timelines.
  • Select, onboard, and manage language vendors, freelance translators, and in-country reviewers — negotiating rates, establishing SLAs, monitoring performance, and maintaining long-term relationships to ensure consistent quality and capacity across languages.
  • Maintain and govern translation memories (TM), glossaries, style guides and terminology databases to maximize reuse, maintain brand voice and tone across multiple markets, and reduce cost per word through TM leverage and proactive terminology alignment.
  • Operate and administer CAT tools and localization platforms (e.g., SDL Trados, memoQ, Smartcat, Crowdin, Transifex, Lokalise) to prepare source files, configure workflows, push/pull content via integrations or APIs, and troubleshoot platform issues.
  • Conduct or coordinate linguistic quality assurance (LQA) and post-translation reviews, including in-country review cycles, style and terminology checks, functional QA for UI strings, and applying defined quality metrics to accept or request revisions.
  • Create and maintain detailed project plans, milestones, risk registers and escalation paths; proactively identify scheduling, resourcing or content risks and implement mitigation strategies to keep projects on time and within budget.
  • Prepare, review and approve vendor quotes, purchase orders and invoices; track translation spend against budget and produce monthly or quarterly financial reports and forecasts for localization activities.
  • Perform source content analysis and file preparation (extracting text from InDesign, HTML, XML, JSON, XLIFF, or extraction via APIs), ensuring translatable segments are clean, context-rich and optimized for CAT tool processing to avoid rework and reduce word count.
  • Manage CMS and platform integrations for content handoff (WordPress, Drupal, Contentful, custom CMS), monitoring content syncs and ensuring localized content publishes correctly with correct metadata and canonical rules.
  • Define and enforce localization process documentation and SLAs, develop onboarding and training materials for new internal requesters and external linguists, and run regular training sessions to reduce intake errors and improve translation quality.
  • Oversee format and layout checks for translated assets (desktop publishing/DTP coordination), ensuring language-specific adjustments (text expansion, RTL support, fonts, line breaks) are implemented and verified prior to release.
  • Implement and monitor QA metrics (e.g., TM leverage, LQA scores, turnaround time, on-time delivery rate, cost per word) and generate dashboards and executive summaries to drive data-informed decisions about vendors, tools and workflows.
  • Facilitate cross-functional localization readiness review meetings prior to major launches, ensuring engineering, product, legal and marketing content is fully prepared for translation and that geo-specific requirements (compliance, regional copy changes) are documented.
  • Manage localization tickets and intake queues, triaging requests, setting expectations with requesters, and maintaining transparency through centralized tracking systems (Jira, Asana, Trello) and regular status updates.
  • Evaluate and pilot new localization tools and automation opportunities (MT engines, pre-editing, machine translation + post-editing, continuous localization) and measure ROI to recommend scalable solutions.
  • Ensure confidentiality and secure handling of sensitive content and IP by enforcing NDAs, secure file transfer procedures, and vendor security checks when working with regulated or proprietary materials.
  • Lead linguistic vendor evaluations and audits, including sample translation assessments, reference checks, and ongoing performance reviews tied to quality, timeliness, and cost-effectiveness.
  • Coordinate legal and compliance translations (contracts, terms, privacy notices), working closely with legal teams to validate translations and ensure certified translations where required.
  • Drive continuous improvement by documenting root-cause analyses of recurring localization errors, implementing corrective actions (process updates, trainings, style guide revisions) and sharing best practices with cross-functional teams.
  • Support SEO localization efforts by advising on keyword adaptation, meta tags, localized content optimization and maintaining a glossary of localized SEO terms to preserve organic visibility in target markets.
  • Prepare and deliver stakeholder-facing project communications, post-project retrospectives, and run workshops to capture feedback, surface pain points and iterate on localization playbooks.

Secondary Functions

  • Maintain up-to-date localization process documentation, run internal training sessions for content owners, and provide hands-on support for urgent or complex translations.
  • Collaborate with data and analytics teams to capture localization metrics, produce actionable insights and contribute to strategic planning for international expansion.
  • Support ad-hoc internationalization (i18n) checks and work with engineering to report and track UI string issues, encoding problems, or integration bugs discovered during translation testing.
  • Participate in vendor sourcing projects and RFP responses, compiling language coverage matrices, sample tests and cost/quality analyses to inform procurement decisions.
  • Contribute to pilot programs for machine translation and post-editing by coordinating linguist testers, tracking performance and documenting quality and productivity impacts.
  • Assist in maintaining compliance with corporate procurement and vendor onboarding processes, including contract renewals, vendor insurance and data protection agreements.
  • Help define and maintain localization KPIs and occasionally prepare executive summaries and dashboards for leadership review.
  • Provide backup support for related content workflows such as bilingual proofreading, copy editing, and small-scale in-language copywriting tasks as needed.

Required Skills & Competencies

Hard Skills (Technical)

  • Proven experience with CAT tools and translation memory systems (e.g., SDL Trados, memoQ, Smartcat, Wordfast) including TM maintenance, segmentation rules and leveraging TMs to reduce cost and improve consistency.
  • Hands-on familiarity with localization platforms and integrations (Crowdin, Transifex, Lokalise, Phrase) and experience managing content syncs via APIs, webhooks or connector plugins.
  • Strong vendor and freelance management skills: sourcing, onboarding, rate negotiation, SLA setting, performance monitoring and audit processes.
  • Linguistic quality assurance (LQA) methodologies, scoring frameworks and ability to conduct or coordinate in-country reviewer programs and post-edit QA.
  • File and format fluency — experience preparing and validating translatable assets in HTML, XML, JSON, XLIFF, InDesign, DOCX, PPTX and handling basic DTP tasks or coordinating with designers.
  • Familiarity with CMS platforms (WordPress, Drupal, Contentful, Sanity) and techniques for publishing localized content and managing metadata and hreflang rules.
  • Solid project management skills including scheduling, resource allocation, risk management, budget tracking and use of PM tools (Jira, Asana, Smartsheet).
  • Basic understanding of machine translation (MT) engines, MT post-edit workflows, and how to evaluate MT output quality and integrate MT into the localization pipeline.
  • Ability to build and maintain glossaries, style guides and terminology databases using TMS features and to drive adoption across stakeholders.
  • Data reporting and analysis skills to track localization KPIs (TAT, LQA scores, TM leverage, cost per word) and present insights in dashboards or executive reports.
  • Experience with SEO localization best practices and keyword localization to help maintain organic search performance in target languages.
  • Knowledge of data security and vendor compliance standards when handling confidential documents and PII in localization workflows.

Soft Skills

  • Exceptional written and verbal communication skills across multiple stakeholders and languages; ability to present complex localization issues clearly and negotiate trade-offs.
  • Strong attention to detail and quality orientation with demonstrated ability to catch linguistic, formatting and contextual issues before publication.
  • Excellent organizational and time-management skills with the capacity to manage multiple concurrent projects and shifting priorities.
  • Proactive problem solver who anticipates blockers, escalates appropriately and drives cross-functional alignment to remove obstacles.
  • Cultural sensitivity and ability to work effectively with diverse in-country linguists, regional teams and external vendors across time zones.
  • Collaborative team player with stakeholder management experience and a customer-service mindset toward internal requesters.
  • Analytical mindset and comfort working with metrics, dashboards and continuous improvement initiatives.
  • Adaptability and curiosity to evaluate and implement new localization technologies and processes.
  • Negotiation and vendor relationship management skills to maintain healthy partnerships while optimizing costs and quality.
  • Leadership potential to train, mentor and coordinate small teams of linguists, freelancers or junior coordinators.

Education & Experience

Educational Background

Minimum Education:

  • Bachelor's degree in Translation, Linguistics, Languages, Communications, Project Management, Business Administration or related field.

Preferred Education:

  • Master's degree or postgraduate diploma in Translation Studies, Localization, Applied Linguistics or Localization Project Management certification.
  • Professional certification in project management (PMP, PRINCE2) or localization (ATA, ITI, GALA/LSP certifications) is a plus.

Relevant Fields of Study:

  • Translation and Interpreting
  • Applied Linguistics
  • Modern Languages and Literatures
  • Localization / Globalization Studies
  • Communications, Journalism or Technical Communication

Experience Requirements

Typical Experience Range: 2–5 years of hands-on translation or localization coordination experience; experience may vary by company size and complexity.

Preferred:

  • 3–5+ years of progressive experience coordinating translation and localization projects for software, marketing, legal or technical content.
  • Demonstrated experience with CAT tools, localization platforms and managing language vendors or freelance linguists across multiple language pairs.
  • Experience working in fast-paced, cross-functional environments (SaaS/product companies, agencies, global enterprises) and familiarity with agile or continuous localization workflows.
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