Lead Reviser at African Development Bank - AfDB

Reference: ADB/19/107
Location: Cote d'Ivoire
Grade: PL2
Position N°: 50092483

The Complex

• The Vice-Presidency, Human Resources and Corporate Services (CHVP) Complex ensures the delivery of efficient, people-centered, client-oriented, corporate services to ensure overall institutional effectiveness in all aspects of the Bank’s corporate services. The complex leads efforts to ensure the competitiveness of the Bank as the employer of choice and is responsible for providing leadership in the formulation and implementation of Bank’s strategies on people, IT, general services and institutional procurements, language services, business continuity, and health and safety strategies.

The Hiring Department

• The primary role of the Language Services Department is to ensure, as required by the Bank's Agreement, the accessibility in the two working languages of the Bank (English and French, and on occasion Arabic and Portuguese) of all issues and documents submitted to Senior Management and governing bodies of the Bank, for efficient decision-making aimed at the achievement of the Bank's mission.
• In this regard, the Department accords high priority to ensuring an accurate and effective flow of communication within the Bank, and also between the Bank, its shareholders, development partners and the public at large, by providing the highest quality of translation, interpretation, editing and terminological services to the Institution. It also seeks to promote multilingualism to enhance communication among staff with the Bank’s clients and partners.

The Position
Under the general supervision of the Director, Language Services Department, the Lead Reviser will:

• Contribute to strategic thinking on policies, rules and procedures governing the Bank's language services;
• Design and implement quality control mechanisms for translations produced by the Department; lead coaching and mentoring programs for translators and revisers; and
• Produce French translation and revision work of impeccable quality for the Bank.

Duties and Responsibilities
Under the supervision and guidance of the Director of Language Services Department, the Lead Reviser will provide high level language services, including but not limited to:

• Ensure quality control of Translation Bank-wide, with special focus on the quality of documents to be submitted to Senior Management and Governing Bodies of the Bank;
• Review, and update policies and procedures governing the Bank's language services;
• Lead and ensure quality control of work done by translators and coordinate such activities during meetings and events organized by the Bank for its stakeholders at headquarters and abroad;
• Revise translations of complex, highly technical and sensitive documents to be sent to the Bank’s Regional and Non-Regional Member Countries, including Head of State and Government;
• Ensure the publication of high quality translations covering the full range of the Bank’s work, namely: reports of an economic and financial nature, statements from Senior Management, audit reports, planning and programming documents, project appraisal reports, legal documents, etc.;
• Lead brainstorming sessions within the Department for terminology harmonization across the Bank;
• Devise strategies aimed at achieving the objectives of the Department and the Bank on multilingualism and translation;
• Serve as a contributing evaluator in the performance evaluation process of translators and revisers in accordance with Bank standards and practices;
• Advise management on the budgetary and financial implications of translation activities and its impact on the Bank’s administrative budget;
• Represent the Department in working groups comprising different organizational units of the Bank, at the request of the Director;
• Lead the Terminology Committee to ensure that new and technical concepts used in the Bank’s documents are identified, reviewed, translated and included in a Terminology Compendium for Bank-wide distribution;
• Lead initiatives aimed at establishing or enhancing partnerships with sister institutions for knowledge sharing and staff exchange programs;
• Design and implement programs aimed at building internal and external capacities in translation, editing and revision;
• Spearhead and coordinate all professional and related training required in Translation, including training in the use of various computer-assisted translation tools.

Selection Criteria
Including desirable skills, knowledge and experience:

• Have at least a Master's Degree or its equivalent in translation;
• Have at least 8 (eight) years of professional experience in a similar organization at increasing levels of responsibility;
• Strong expertise in French revision;
• Ability to think strategically with a view to identifying shortcomings in translation policies, procedures and processes and propose solutions to overcome them;
• Ability to work under pressure, with calm and serenity, setting priorities and handling multiple tasks simultaneously;
• Capacity to analyze complex translation requests and scenarios and find appropriate solutions;
• Capacity to lead a group of professional staff and coordinate interactions with other teams in the Department and Bank-wide;
• High sense of responsibility, confidentiality and discretion;
• Strong expertise in the formulation and implementation of relevant mentoring and development programs for teams of translators;
• Ability to communicate efficiently (written and oral) in English or French;
• High level skills and operational effectiveness;
• Competence in the use of standard Microsoft Office Suite applications and demonstrate knowledge of other software packages applicable to translation (workflow, scheduling, translation memory, etc.).