Online MA in Localization Project Management Courses

This course introduces students to Localization Project Management, covering fundamental principles including business communication, localization workflows, roles and responsibilities, and project management skills. Students will build and simulate the full localization workflow for a variety of content types such as: videos, statics, websites, and product UI. Students learn to manage linguistic assets, tackle diverse project challenges, and iterate for continuous improvement in the dynamic field of translation and localization.

Students will gain hands-on experience using computer-assisted translation tools to help human translators during translation. Then they will increase automation of translation by customizing neural machine translation and generative AI. Finally, they will automate and manage the entire translation process with translation workflow management systems.

This course covers localizing various DTP (print), web, and A/V (motion) formats, emphasizing skills for translators, project managers, and engineers. Key topics include fundamental typography, preparing assets, Adobe Creative Cloud tools, web technologies like WordPress, and audio-visual skills like video editing, subtitling, and dubbing. This is an applied course with project-based instruction and assessment.

Students will look at product life cycles to identify upstream localization involvement in the ideation stage of any feature or product. Students will engage in stakeholder education to elevate the role of localization within their companies. We learn critical soft skills such as communication, negotiation, dealing with difficult stakeholders, crucial accountability conversations, change management.

A great localization project manager working on marketing or support content knows not only how to localize the content but understands what went into creating the source. This course introduces international marketing fundamentals, along with how to localize and analyze marketing assets and campaigns. It also gives students a solid foundation in Help Center and support content localization.

This course is designed to familiarize students with concepts, processes and the environment of the modern localization industry. Specifically, we will concentrate on localizing desktop, mobile, and web-based computer applications and games. We will be especially interested in how to handle strings and how to process them for translation. We will look at software and games localization from several different angles: as a localization manager within a company, a project manager within an agency, a localization engineer within an agency, and as a translator. The assignments and discussions will be designed to get students thinking about various issues from these different points of view.

The vendor management part of the course focuses on selecting, onboarding and managing resources Language Services Providers (LPSs) use to execute their localization work. The supplier management part of the course focuses on the business relationship between the buyers of localization services and their suppliers, the LSPs. The course will cover vendor and supplier management processes, workflows and models used on both the buyer and supplier sides of the industry.

The data side of this course introduces students to the use of data in localization program management as they learn how to incorporate data and data analytic thinking into the different aspects of a localization program, so they can make more informed localization decisions, improve their localization processes, and demonstrate their program’s value to others. This finance side of this course will provide students the opportunity to apply the most common financial concepts utilized in the buying and selling of localization services, understanding the stresses that both sides face in the “tug of war” between the vendor-side’s need to achieve healthy profit margins, as contrasted against the client-side’s need for maximum return on investment (ROI).

The course will focus on standards, processes, tools and models used to manage quality in the localization industry. It will explain how to design a quality management strategy for a company of any size and level of maturity, and help you manage quality not just as a linguistic, but a business function.

Introduction to Intercultural Competence provides an overview of theories and approaches related to communicating within and across different cultural communities. The course addresses the complexity behind the concept of “culture” and guides students through greater awareness of their own culture(s) as they prepare to engage successfully with others. Students will examine and critically analyze various frameworks related to the development, training and assessment of intercultural competence and consider how identity and power impact both intra- and intercultural communication.

Power and identity are central to our understanding of cultures and intercultural interaction. In this class we will explore the role of situated and transportable identities at the individual and collective levels as well as power at the “me-cro”, micro, meso, and macro levels. In addition, we will consider topics including intersectionality, positionality, diversity, inclusion, equity, ethics, privilege, marginalization, markedness, and epistemologies and how they manifest across contexts. We will discuss ethical intercultural methods as well as how power and identity connect with and shape social justice processes and goals. Through in-class discussion, hands-on activities, discussion of case studies, interviews, and presentations, students will investigate their personal conceptions of power and identity in order to identify their professional philosophies and practices moving forward.

This course examines the social, cultural and linguistic factors that play a role in how intercultural communication is accomplished in multilingual/multicultural settings and will enable students to gain the knowledge and tools needed for effective participation in multilingual/multicultural communication. The course is designed for students who will find themselves interacting with people across varied linguistic and cultural backgrounds.