Touching base – A brief interview with our employees

Five questions for Sophie Kersuzan, Head of Project Management

Dear Sophie, you have been Head of Project Management at Gemino since 2019.

“Yes, I’ve been a project manager at Gemino since 2014. As the team grew, I took over as divisional manager at the end of 2019. But my story with Gemino started back in 2011 with an internship and then two years as a freelance translator.”

How many people are on your team and what are your tasks?

“There are currently six project managers on the team – some of whom have over ten years’ experience. We recently welcomed a new colleague to the team, who previously worked in quality assurance for us for several years.
Our tasks include supporting our clients – from the initial enquiries through to the delivery of orders, process consulting, and feedback management – as well as the overall coordination of project participants, whether fellow employees or external service providers, throughout the life cycle of each project.”

Your team is spread across Europe and most of them work remotely. Where do your colleagues work from and how do you keep the team spirit high despite the physical distance?

“There is currently only one colleague in our team at the Berlin office. Everyone else works completely remotely – not only from other parts of Germany, but also from France, Greece and, like me, Spain.

Some of us have moved away from Berlin, and we know each other from the time when we still sat together in the office. Others have worked remotely at Gemino from the beginning. The distance and the screen don’t make cohesion any more difficult, because we are constantly in contact with each other. Nobody works in isolation: we speak and write to each other several times a day. We always have the camera on in Teams calls, of course!

To promote team spirit outside of projects, we also take a moment every week to have a leisurely talk about things other than work: tips for caring for balcony plants or ideas for Christmas presents, for example.”

You’ve been with Gemino for 12 years. What changes have you observed in your area?

“For several years now, we have seen the modularization of content, whereby file-based formats such as InDesign with individual layouts are gradually being replaced by exports from content management systems. As a result, services such as foreign-language typesetting (DTP) have made way for other challenges, such as the issue of document consistency when only parts of a document are translated at a time.

Recently, the localization of e-learning and videos has also become more important. These are formats that require completely different processes than technical documentation or traditional marketing materials.

And of course, AI has become an important topic in our industry in recent years. We support our clients with this transformation so that issues such as data security, specialist terminology, and linguistic quality are not lost in the name of cost-cutting and quicker processing times. We also communicate a lot with our freelance linguists, so they don’t get left behind in our journey towards changed and new services. Of course, the issue of fair and up-to-date remuneration also plays an important role here. We give a lot of thought to this.”

Are there also changes in your personal tasks?

“The remit of project management at Gemino has evolved and changed considerably over the years. With growth and complexity, the tasks and responsibilities had to be adapted. Whereas I used to be responsible for the technical preparation, quality assurance, and foreign-language typesetting for my projects, there are now separate teams for these areas.

The tools I use for my daily tasks have also changed. Professional software automates some tasks and helps me to do the remaining manual work more reliably and efficiently. Fortunately, I no longer have to build quotations in Excel!”

And finally, a personal question: What do you actually do when you’re not managing projects for Gemino?

“As I spend my working hours sitting in front of the computer, the rest of the time I’m very social and out and about a lot.”