A look at the role of ...

At exact!, we are not just translators or administrators, we are also project managers, quality managers, terminologists, and much more. In this section, we would like to present to you the various fields of activity beyond pure translation. To kick things off, Tina Dolezel will tell us a bit about the various tasks that her role as exact!’s SAP

I share this honourable yet fairly time-consuming task with my colleague, Oliver Müller. Oliver is the point of contact for all technical issues relating to connectivity and system problems, etc., and is also responsible for the ongoing SAP Notes project. At exact!, we all have extensive knowledge of SAP, but Oliver provides indispensable support, particularly when it comes to technical matters, and without his help many of us would sometimes be lost. It is not uncommon to hear “Oliver, can I ask you something …” ringing through the corridors.

In addition to technical problems, there are, of course, plenty of other matters to clarify. A large part of my role as SAP specialist for translation consists of maintaining and managing the SAP “customer information”. I am the first port of call for questions relating to specific jobs. This includes not only taking account of the various job types, such as the translation of training documents, software or documentation, but also the different instructions that apply to each of the projects. For example – how should interface elements be dealt with? Is system research possible? How should questions be put to the project manager at SAP?

I gather all the customer-specific background information that is relevant for us from various sources, such as the regular SAP Newsletter, project-specific instructions from SAP, SAP-specific channels including SAP Jam, documents on the SAP Service Marketplace as well as SAP training and webinars. I then evaluate this information, summarise it and inform my internal and external translator colleagues. Together with my colleague Oliver and the management team, I also regularly check the SAP-specific work processes that we document, to ensure that they are up to date.

Alongside Oliver, I am also a point of contact for all our in-house and freelance translators when they have specific questions relating to an SAP job.

Translating for SAP is a very challenging task that requires you to consider a vast amount of information. To deliver excellent work in this area, in-depth training is essential. exact! has developed a comprehensive program to provide initial and continuous training for SAP translators. The task of training falls to me and my colleague Oliver as SAP Power Users. However, we do not only relate information to new employees – our experienced colleagues receive new or modified information in bite-size pieces, so that we are constantly expanding our knowledge.

My aim is to summarise all the necessary information as concisely as possible and to establish consistent procedures so that the same queries do not crop up again and again with every new job and are thus kept to a minimum. My responsibility for the SAP customer information is a challenge that I enjoy, because it gives me the chance to continuously build on my skills.