Nothing in this world stays static. Everything is prone to change in one way or another. If we take the example of organizations, the workplace never remains static. Eventually, the management has to make changes. This may pertain to the workers, the organizational structure or hierarchy, or the technological aspect.  So it doesn’t really matter how successful your agency is, whether it’s Russian translation services or Malay translation services, you have to make changes with the passage of time. Because if you don’t, there’s a high probability that you might lose your market share to a company that did make the necessary changes. 

However, there is always a catalyst that activates the process of change in translation services. That person is known as the change agent. They are usually managers in a company, but there is no hard and fast rule that it has to be a person of authority. There are examples available where non-managers were responsible for the change in the organization. For instance, Mandarin translation services changed a lot of their operations by looking at their competitors who were more successful. This enabled them to highlight their mistakes and bring the necessary change to their hiring process of human translators.

The Types of Changes in Translation Agencies

One may ask what types of changes are there. To answer this question, let’s discuss some of them:

• Structural Change
• Technological change
• People
  

1. Structural Change

If there are changes in the surroundings, an organization cannot sustain its operations without making any radical changes within the structure of its firm. You have to understand one thing, a translation agency is entirely dependent upon its structure. The structure allows how the work gets accomplished. If the structure is poor it will hinder the translated content to get finished on time and vice versa. 

So in this scenario, structural change pertains to the roles that are assigned to a particular department and when you combine different operations to enhance efficiency and try to save resources and reduce costs. Moreover, structural change can be in the form of reducing the hierarchical chain of the firm, so that the issues of the initial levels can reach upper management at a faster rate. Or reducing the number of workers under a supervisor to make his job easier, but effective.  

We can take the example of the Russian translation services and how they made a structural change. So what the structural change was that in an attempt to empower their employees, they decentralized their organizational structure. This reduced the friction towards innovations and emboldens motivations to contribute to the system. 

2. Technological Change

The era of the internet has begun. And according to most technologists, it’s just the beginning of automation and Artificial intelligence. Management has become more efficient and effective with fewer, enabling organizations to reach their potential in a short span. However, the challenge with technology is that it’s never static, but is in a constant dynamic state. This aspect forces translation agencies to make changes accordingly.

So if we discuss the changes, technology brings in translation services, is that it mostly adheres to neural translations or machine translation that assists management to translate large amounts of data into the language of their choice, in a short period of time. For instance, Mandarin translation services have incorporated technology into their entire translation functions and have installed advanced translation tools and equipment that makes changes in the entire workplace to enhance the productivity of workers. 

However, management has realized that the inculcation of technology or automation usually involves the replacement of humans with machines. This is a tough decision that translation agencies have to make. On one hand, they have to ensure that they ameliorate their efficiency on a consistent basis. On the other hand, they have to maintain a sufficient amount of human translators as well. Because without human translators, the translations cannot keep intact the cultural intricacies, nuances, and preferences of the target culture. Thereby, technological change should improve the agency’s performance, but not diminish it. 

3. People

The people involved in translation organizations constitute human translators. And any human effort that goes into the translation process cannot remain static. It’s a journey, with many ups and downs. Usually, the management has to deal with a lot of emotional shifts and attitude variations. And that is not an easy job to do. So in this endeavor, translation firms have to develop their organizations. 

Experts call this process Organizational development, which is the process of adapting the business functions in a way that allows the workers to concentrate on their roles and goals, meanwhile, also maintain good interpersonal relationships with their employees and management.  

In order to understand the process of OB, let us take an example of Malay translation services. This organization puts in a lot of effort when it comes to developing its people. They incorporate sensitivity training, in which the employees are formed in groups and allowed to discuss their feelings about their work and the company. So it’s more like a therapy session, but without someone judging them. This exercise then eventually builds the team and people start to discuss problems and issues with each other.  

Conclusion

Conclusively, we can say is that change is bound to happen and is inevitable. People and especially large management systems have to change their attitudes, perceptions, and eventually their way of doing things to benefit themselves in the future.

If the external environment never changes, managers could have claimed that they have the right to remain static, as nothing external can ever affect what happens inside their business. But with globalization and the internet, the world has become more dynamic and constantly updating itself, it’s imperative to adapt.