By Sharmishtha Samal

Ants have very complex networks, very similar to today’s linguistic networks. The way a colony of ant functions is very similar to the way a good translation industry functions in today’s generation. In an ant colony, things work like they do in a factory. There are subdivisions in a colony of ants where each group of ants or ant has a specific function that it caters to. The queen is responsible for laying the eggs in the colony, then there is the subdivision which includes worker ants who are responsible for numerous tasks including looking after the queen, gathering food for all members of the colony and to protect the nest by providing defense against the enemies. The queen does not have the job of giving commands or guiding the worker ants regarding their work. Worker ants analyse their own personal preferences, their interactions with the nestmates and sundry cues that they get from their surroundings or environment to determine and prioritise their immediate actions.

In like manner, in a good translation industry, the networking and cooperation amongst translators when it comes to working as a team is analogous to a colony of ants. When it comes to a project requiring cooperation from a group of translators, work and duties are mutually divided amongst translators. One person takes up the main job of combining the work of the rest of the translators, like the queen ant laying the eggs, or in other words, having the most crucial role. Likewise, the rest of the translators, much like the worker ants, can complement each other’s work duties and help each other to successfully complete the project in the shortest amount of time. Amongst the rest of the translators, there will be further intra-division of  work, where, one person can be in charge of roughly translating the whole project at once, the other could take responsibility for one specific portion of the project and thoroughly revise that specific portion; meanwhile, another person could claim duties for another portion of the project and so on. In the end, the master translator or the person with the most crucial job of all, which would be to combine and put the various pieces of the project together can execute her/his job. In this way, the most efficient results can be expected out of every project.

Team work and cooperation is the most important aspect of any industry, including the translation industry, and tracing back to nature for answers has always been the best thing to do and nature is known to give us the best way to do things. An Ant Colony is therefore, like a role model for teamwork and translators should work similarly for utmost productivity.

Profile Link http://modlingua.com/interns/408-sharmishtha-samal-spanish-translator.html

Writer Sharmishtha Samal is German and French Language and Translation Intern at Modlingua, India's No1. certified translation and Language service providers based in New Delhi