Successful realisation of a highly demanding, large interpreting project

Project summary

Client type:
Philip Morris Lithuania

Scope, duration:
360 hours of consecutive on-site interpreting during the operator’s training in Portugal

Language pairs:
Lithuanian <> Portuguese and English <> Portuguese

Goals achieved:

- A team of professional and experienced interpreters was successfully formed

- We helped the client to reduce the budget by allocating interpreters based in Portugal for this job, saving on travel and accommodation costs

- The impeccable quality of highly technical interpreting was assured

- The client was satisfied with our services

Introduction

Philip Morris needed to ensure smooth communication during a 3-week machine operators’ training in its factory in Portugal. As work in the factory takes place continuously in shifts over 24 hours, 3 interpreters were needed to help the operators in 3 different 8-hour shifts.

Challenges

Despite our large database of professional interpreters, it was a challenge to build a team of 3 interpreters for such a long and demanding project.

First of all, the Lithuanian-Portuguese language combination itself was a challenge, because we needed to find professional interpreters who were based in Portugal.

3 shifts, including 1-night shift and 1 late evening shift and quite difficult working conditions (some noise and dust at the operator’s working place) were a particular challenge for the interpreters, too.

The subject area of the interpreting was highly technical and very specific. The interpreters didn’t have experience with cigarette producing equipment and needed to prepare extensively before starting the job. The client was able to provide the Operations manual of particular equipment in English but not in Lithuanian or Portuguese. Simply finding the proper Lithuanian and Portuguese terms for this domain was a challenge in and of itself.