By Swastika Saha

I joined Modlingua during my summer break in 2018 with no knowledge of the translation industry and no professional experience. I came to learn, and thanks to the effort of Mr. Ravi Kumar, I got a real look into the wide field of languages and linguistics.

How the internship worked

The programme was fully online, so interns joined from India, Spain, Italy, Argentina, Brazil and elsewhere. We attended live video lectures, or watched them later on YouTube, by entrepreneurs and linguists from around the world, including Mrs. Veena Krishnamurthy, Dr. Julian Zapata and Dr. Clizia Polato. Each lecture led to an assignment, submitted on Modlingua's online portal by a deadline. The team reviewed our work and asked us to correct mistakes, and a Facebook group kept us in touch.

We covered social media and digital marketing, the translation business, transcription, speech-to-text technology, citizen journalism, YouTube subtitling, CAT tools, and basic translation and interpreting skills.

The assignments

• A professional profile, sent with a motivation letter and a recommendation from our institution.
• Analysing and correcting our own mistakes using a rubric for error control.
• An essay on quality control in content writing and translation.
• Transcribing a video from the Modlingua channel. Some interns went further and translated their transcripts into German, Spanish or French.
• Subtitling that video on YouTube by timing the transcript to the speech.
• A 600-word essay on one of several topics, such as globalization, localization, internationalization or building a business model with the AIDA framework.
• A script on the life and work of a language professional, and another on an influential business leader.
• A final report on the whole experience.

As a French language student who loves writing, I also volunteered for a creative summary of the video "Handling Language Barriers in North-East India" with an intern from a very different background. We learned to divide the work and deliver it as a team.

What I valued most

• Flexibility. I could work from home at any time, with no travel.
• A global classroom. Interns from many cultures asked sharp questions that sometimes surprised the experts, and every session left time for them.
• Language exposure. Hearing many accents of English built my vocabulary and listening skills.
• Approachable experts. Speakers answered questions patiently and stayed reachable by email and Facebook.

What I take away

Learning never stops. In a fast-changing world, we have to adapt, accept that mistakes are part of learning, and keep practising. I would recommend this internship to any language learner who wants to grow professionally. To see the kind of work these skills lead to, explore Modlingua's language services.