Oleg Vasin: Volunteer

Planning, controlling and communicating: these are the main tasks of a project manager volunteer working for The Rosetta Foundation, once the project has been taken up by a volunteer translator. This month we spoke to one of our project manager volunteers, Oleg Vasin, who started working with us a few months ago and has already managed several projects.

1. When did you start working with The Rosetta Foundation? How did you find out about us?

I found out about The Rosetta Foundation at the beginning of this year searching for international volunteer programmes on the Internet. I registered on the TRF Portal in February and started managing projects.

2. You are one of our volunteer project managers. What does your work involve?

In general, it involves planning, controlling and communication. Having taken on a new project, one should check and plan a translation project, for example make decisions about work units, dates and risks, and waiting for volunteer translators to pick up the work units. From my experience with The Rosetta Foundation, I can say that not all work units published on the site are picked up by translators. And this is perhaps the most challenging thing: finding the right translators for the project in a short time. Using the list of translators and their skills one should select the right ones and send them a message. From my point of view, writing an effective message is the most important part in finding the right people, because one needs to provide the necessary information and inspire people to work on the project. Once the translation and proofreading are done and checked by a project manager (in some cases some corrections may be needed, for example in text formatting), the translated text is delivered to the partner organisation.

3. How do you find using Share Point, our collaboration site, and managing a project by yourself?

The collaboration site is very helpful, but not all volunteers are used to it. Managing a project by yourself is an option and is useful in some cases, for example working with the project team via email.

4. Does a project manager need language skills? Why?

I suppose that to be more effective as a project manager, you need to have at least a basic knowledge of linguistics. This knowledge can be gained from projects, because working with international teams and on multilingual projects you almost become a linguistic scientist.

5. How many projects have you managed for The Rosetta Foundation? What are your impressions?

So far I’ve finished 3 projects and I’m working on some others. I’m glad that I can work with such positive people and translation projects, because I do like linguistics, for the good cause.

6. How much time do you usually spend on projects?

It depends on the project and what stage a project is at. From 15 minutes up to 1-2 hours a day.

7. Why do you think it is important to provide free translations for non-profit organisations?

A lot of non-profit organisations aim to help people who really need help, for example the sick, the poor, the disabled… and helping such organisations we can play our part in helping these people.

8. You are a Russian project manager. Could you suggest ways to get more Russian translators involved with The Rosetta Foundation?

I can suggest the following: promoting The Rosetta Foundation with Russian socials networks like vk.com and odnoklassniki.ru; placing banners, articles or links on Russian linguistic sites, contact linguistic universities or linguistic departments and put  brochures on their billboards (the Linguistic Department Dean of the University I graduated from would not mind). If needed, I’m ready to help with all of these.

Raquel Ligero