The Faculty of Foreign Languages of Tomsk State University marked the graduation of first bachelors within the program “Technological Planning and Implementation of Translation Projects” (T-Pro). The program was developed as a professional school and trains industry translators and translation project managers. There were 6 people that graduated from the T-Pro program. Four of them received job offers from leading translation companies during their training.

The Faculty of Foreign Languages launched the T-Pro program in 2021 and became the first faculty of foreign languages in Russia to begin training such specialists. The position of the translation project manager appeared quite recently due to changes in the technological organization of the translation process: an increase in the volume of orders, limited time frames, etc.

The translation manager organizes the entire production process, builds a technological chain from discussing the terms of reference with the customer to delivering the finished product.

— The idea of training translation project managers appeared in consultation with industry partners of the faculty. The initiator of the program was the translation agency “AUM” (Novosibirsk), one of the leading translation companies in Russia, – says Tatyana Antonova, associate professor of the Department of English Philology, TSU Faculty of Foreign Languages, head of the T-Pro program. – In addition to AUM, the translation company Janus Worldwide (Moscow) and the Alliance-PRO bureau (Tomsk) also took an active part in the development of educational and practice-oriented modules of the program.

Due to the involvement of industrial partners in the study process and internships in specialized companies, students quickly become involved in the professional environment and acquire relevant skills that are in demand in the labor market.

Thus, most of the T-Pro graduates received job offers from translation companies during their studies. Eliza Egizbaeva and Maria Sunchugasheva became translators of business texts, Ksenia Karpova was invited by the AUM agency to the positions of post-editor of IT texts and translator. Ksenia also collaborates with Kira Kuznetsova as a freelancer with the Cyrillic content localization company.

The graduates of the T-Pro program will be able not only to work as translators, translation editors and translation project managers, but also to find jobs as managers in various fields. Olga Nagel, Dean of the Faculty of Foreign Languages, added that most of the graduates plan to continue their studies at the Faculty of Foreign Languages as master students, combining work and study in order to delve into the management and assessment of the quality of translation.

This year the program “Technological Planning and Implementation of Translation Projects” continues recruiting students with the participation of a new partner from China – Shenyang Polytechnic University. The graduates will receive diplomas from both universities.

— The T-Pro program remains flexible and does not stop transforming in response to external requests. In 2023, it entered the pilot project for the transformation of higher education in Russia, and in 2024 it was included in the list of basic higher education programs. Then the Applied Artificial Intelligence module was added to the program as a response to digitalization and technologization, says Olga Nagel. – Since 2025, the program is launched in a network format with the participation of Shenyang Polytechnic University. The new format of the program is dictated by changing geopolitical conditions and increased demand for English-Chinese translators.

Students of the T-Pro network program will study Chinese from the first year, and will also study at Shenyang Polytechnic University in China. There is also an additional opportunity to study at the Shenyang Polytechnic University during the vacation period.