“Leadership is a combination of strategy and character”, Sergey Balashov

A straight-forward, confident and goal-driven leader with the vision. Moreover, he is the one who brings new ideas to the table and thinks about where the company is going.

With over 20 years’ experience in the translation industry, and holding a leadership role for more than 10 years, Sergey knows how to get job done and influence his team to perform at their peak ability.

“Being a manager is a challenge and it is not easy to handle, however my complete focus is on the job done in a timely manner, still I’m responsible for my team: their performance, motivation and professional growth. It is a great and the most rewarding feeling to be able to accomplish this.”

We had an opportunity to put a few questions to Sergey and as an open communicator, Sergey shared an existing story, that is worth to be told to a wider audience!

Accomplishment that has shaped your career

I strongly believe that our career path starts long before we come to our first interview as proud graduates. Your question reminded me of my early school years. At the time, I was unlucky enough to have the first English teacher who really taught us to hate English. At some point I believed that I was not born for languages.

Though the teacher did not stay long, my desire to learn was lost. As you know, you do not get anywhere without a purpose. And even with a new, much better teacher, I did not feel I could push the ‘restart button’ until the day I visited a meeting with a guy from Britain. I was amazed to see some of my mates managed to talk to this guy. English turned to be a useful tool that can be put into practice! I was impressed. Next day at school, I went to my new English teacher to ask for additional classes and she was kind enough to agree. This was a start of a long and demanding journey. It was not easy, and probably could never be, but after a while I was able to read and understand some simple texts. That was it! I learned the philosophy of winning. From that moment on, I knew that you can build your way if you want to. Think, work, and win. This works for me until this day.

The best and the worst part of being Manager

Being a manager means leading a team. So the best thing is to see how team members grow and become capable of doing big things, while the worst is when you realize that some of them are unable to keep up with the pace and expectations of our customers. It is my pleasure to say I have witnessed many positive results and very rarely had to face issues that needed ‘tough’ decisions.

The biggest challenge I’ve faced in my career

When I was a project manager, we got a project for about one million words to be completed in two months. I was pretty young, the team had very limited capabilities and my first thought was that we will never be able to complete it. But as they say, you never know what you can do until you try. We thought, we worked, and we won. The great thing about such training is that you start believing in yourself.

The most important factor I consider when hiring someone

It is always a combination. Just like when you need a cake, your selection is not limited to flour only. Same here. I’m definitely looking for professionals. Persons who are duly qualified to do their jobs. At the same time, candidates should be able and willing to learn. In this quickly changing world, one can either progress or lose competence. And the third thing is how friendly they are and whether they can fit into the team.

Machine translation to replace human translation in the Life Science translation sector… we will have to wait!

Expectations are high, especially in light of new achievements with neural machine translation. But after multiple tests, we come to the conclusion it is still far from being usable. The amount of rework makes it unjustifiable. And with the risks in medical translations… as I said we will have to wait.

The biggest challenges, the translation industry has faced over the last 10 years

We have been speeding up all these years. Then this coronavirus came and we had no right to slow down. We speak about medical translation as you understand. Lots of work to do, a pressing schedule, and requirements for high quality. Just as usual ?…

But joking aside, my impressions is that the biggest challenge will be related to technology. Plenty of technologies and solutions emerge every day. It is easy to believe that soon the role of human specialist will be much decreased, or non-existent. My personal belief is that our biggest and most important task will be in finding the right balance between human effort and technology. Those who can make it will win.

To accomplish within the next year…

Make my team even stronger. We should be able to easily handle tasks that seem complicated or even impossible today.

The best book you’ve read this year

To be honest, I do not think there can simply be a best book ever. So many directions you can think of. Reference books, fiction, science, science fiction ?.

So I would rather name the book that I was really impressed with. This was Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow. It truly amazed me and greatly supplemented the think, work, and win strategy.