The Translation Assembly Line: In a business context, the translation process may be defined as an assembly line procedure by which a source text is transformed in ordered stages accurately from a specific source language into a specific target language by specialized members of a translation team working at each stage individually and in cooperation. Each stage of the translation process also represents a role to be played by some member of the translation team. As with an assembly line in the manufacturing industry, certain types of work must be performed on the raw material in a certain order at each stage. This work is performed by a team member having a unique specialized skill. As the raw material moves down the assembly line, it is gradually transformed into an intermediate product. After the final stage is passed, it becomes a final product. The assembly line functions properly when the raw material gains added value at each stage. Thus, the team member at each stage actually has not one but two responsibilities. The first is to add the value he is supposed to add. The second is to avoid degrading the value added by upstream team members. As noted in other pages of this Quality Control section, the primary means of preventing such degradation is conferral among team members. As the maxim says, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. Conferral among team members is the way to ensure that all links are strong.

Roles Played in the Translation Process: There are five stages in the translation assembly line: (1) Authoring, (2) Coordinating, (3) Translating, (4) Checking, (5) Proofreading. These types of labor also define the roles to be played by members of the translation team. The work and roles of team members can and almost always will overlap in various ways depending mainly on the technical skills of each team member and their deployment at the various stages of the translation assembly line. Unlike a conventional assembly line, one member of a translation team usually does play more than one role. Two or more members may also play a single role. A coordinator may also serve as a translator.

Organizing the Translation Team: As noted above, translation is a team effort. This means that someone must organize the translation team. Users have two options. The first option is for the user to build its own translation team with some combination of employees and outside specialists, such as independent translators. The second option is for users to outsource the organizing process itself by relying on the services of a large, full-service translation company. The ease and cost of organizing and maintaining a good translation team depends above all on the regularity and urgency of the relevant user's translation needs. Organizing and maintaining a cost-effective translation team is much easier for users whose translation needs are less urgent and arise on a regular basis. In contrast, doing so is much more difficult for users whose translation needs are large, urgent and arise on an irregular basis. As a result, the wise strategy for the former users is to build a translation team with an appropriate combination of in-house employees and outside language specialists. In contrast, the appropriate strategy for the latter kind of user is usually to outsource the task of organizing the translation team by relying on the services of a large translation services agency. In general, users who can organize their own teams have more control, lower costs, better long-term quality, and fewer headaches.