By Mahak Yadav

Hello, I am Mahak, currently pursuing my graduation in BA French Hons from the University of Delhi. I've finished my second year and I've felt that I had been living in a bubble, I've always been worried about the lack of practical and professional skills, until recently when I was selected as an intern at modlingua. It has been over 2 weeks and my learning plateau is climbing up as a steep curve. I've noticed exponential growth in my understanding, employment, and implementation of professional and technical skills not only in the field of translation but in every domain. And the two most important things I've learned until now are networking and marketing.

We began with expanding and increasing our network on various platforms, to enlighten us we had two impactful sessions on networking, the first being - the art of networking using the analogy of ants which highlighted that how networking opens professional doors, harbors growth, helps in community building. Further, we can also use it as a means for self-promotion. At last, it also instills in our skill of effective communication. To corroborate this, another session on translators and wolf pack; took my learnings further along the lines of team building, trust-building with peers. And how under proper guidance and with confidence building we can grow and move ahead.

The next remarkable learning was about marketing. An umbrella that covers online marketing, social media marketing, digital marketing, etc. I never realized how these tools could be game-changers. But with the availability of internet, social media platforms worldwide; the accessibility, outreach, and presence, they provide us is tremendous. Added to this, the digital footprints that we create help in expanding our business and creates a global identity for ourselves that spreads around the world irrespective of the boundaries and borders. Using social media for marketing, self-promotion, or product marketing is also in trend recently, hence using it for fun and for profit is a must, which was the takeaway for me. Now I use this knowledge to promote modlingua on various platforms by curating write-ups and posts.

This is just a small part of my learning experience at modlingua. we've also learned about content writing, SEO practices like cloaking, stuffing, backlinking, soft skills like leadership, public speaking, language entrepreneurship, etc in just a span of 2 weeks. I'm privileged and grateful to be a part of the modlingua and to have a great mentor like Dr. Ravi Kumar. I'm sure we'll expand our skill sets more in the coming time and this is indeed a great learning opportunity for me.