Cognitive flows

Even the simplest translation process workflows involve a number of participants with different roles, large amounts of information (some of which is needed to do the work and some of which is superfluous) and, above all, the processing of different kinds of data (texts to translate, memories, glossaries, reference materials, queries etc.).

For example, let’s look at cognitive flows, i.e. those that transmit the initial ‘knowledge’ (documents and instructions) along the operating process right up to final delivery and storage.

  • There are participants at various levels, with different responsibilities, but all of them are required to process knowledge in a single stream.
  • The way in which the initial knowledge is processed informs how the operating process develops.
  • We use different instruments to transmit and to process knowledge. These are interlinked to create the correct and most up-to-date knowledge output.
  • There are cases in which some participants must transmit knowledge to other participants, but not to all of them (e.g. different skills centres must transfer knowledge to the supplier of translations, or the various translators to the reviewers, the project managers to different services providers and so on).
  • There is knowledge that must be filed in order to be used in the next processing cycle.

Communication flows

Adding communication flows between all the participants involved complicate things further, especially considering that they interweave constantly at almost every stage in the process.

The characteristics of communication flows are:

  • the diversity of the levels involved
  • the simultaneity of the various information flows all pertaining to the same job, which must therefore be coordinated jointly by the different participants in the process

Knowledge Flow

If instead of concentrating on structuring the workflow – which also depends on the projects and specific nature of the cases – , we focus on the exact structuring of the communication process starting from the team involved, case by case, we will gain greater simplification of the process and zero dispersion of knowledge and information. Furthermore, at the end of the process, all the actors will have access to the most up-to-date knowledge available, as shown in the diagram below.