BRIEF PROFILE
I’m Lohith Kumar, working as a freelance translator for the past 5 years for Tamil and English pair. I’ve been worked and working with major translation agencies around the globe. I’m a B.Com graduate. When I was studying 12th, I met with a minor accident or incident I’d say which made me a quadriplegic and changed the course of my life. At that time, in 2009, everyone was fond of becoming an IT professional and so was I. But my physical condition after the incident as well as the economic situation of my family didn’t let me to chase my dreams.
I completed my 12th and then B.Com via distance education. And after completing my degree, when I started to search for a job, I was denied a job due to my physical disability as well as the poor infrastructure even in major companies in and around my city. I wasn’t in the situation to move to major cities. So I was stuck, my life was stuck. But I didn’t lose hope, I started searching for what would be of my capability, to work from home. This was the time I came across the translation industry. I didn’t have any knowledge about it but still, I wanted to give it a try. But, fortunately, it clicked. But that didn’t happen within a day, I started exploring the industry and tried whatever I can to gain insights about the industry. Registering in major translation job portals, gaining intermediate knowledge in Tamil and English, learning about CAT tools, etc, Then slowly everything picked up and started to do projects in various domains including my favourite, media and entertainment. My ideology is if I want to become something I have to gain all sort of knowledge and skills related to that and only this will make me a successful person. I don’t want to be the Jack of all trades but master of none, but master of a single trade, translation industry. And this ideology made me land my career flight in Modlingua airport to fill my fuel tank with the lifetime validity fuel of knowledge.
Life will give us many opportunities, sometimes unexpected ones too, but grasping the right one at right time matters. One such opportunity is pursuing an internship with Modlingua and I hope I’ll learn more skills from the experience of Modlingua people.
CAREER GOALS
Chasing the ball of ‘ambition’ and shooting it stylishly into the space between the goalposts of ‘life’ is what I’m trying to do. In simple words, to live my life as I wish! Being a freelance translator for 5+ years without any basic certifications or anything else related to translation, I started to think myself that getting a certification and gaining academic knowledge in this field will improve and enhance my skills which will be a boost to my career as a translator. I also have ample interest in editing/proofreading career but I’d like to take it along with the translation career. I have to gain more skills and I’m trying my best gain more knowledge and become a professional in this field are my goals now.
To be honest, none of the things I mentioned above was my ambition once. Tamil, my native language, and English were just extra subjects to me during my school and college. This doesn’t mean I didn’t like them before, I liked them but only with the view of leisure. I was looking forward to becoming a specialist in computers and stuff. But life, which gave me an unexpected twisted gift, had other plans with me. A small incident, of course with a major impact, changed my life path and made Tamil and English as my career, I mean translation as my career. Though translation became my profession as I didn’t have any other choice at that point of time, I must appreciate myself and feel proud as I was confident enough that I’d be successful in this career.
In these past years, my love for these two languages grew with me and my experience and now I feel very happy with what and whom I’m in this career. With the help of the internet world, I gained lots of knowledge about these two languages and that made me more curious to learn and explore lots of other things related to these languages. I’m loving my profession. The vast knowledge of Tamil and English motivates me to share the things I’ve learnt with society in useful ways!
I wish to become a successful translation professionally and go beyond. Thinking of this the first thing that came to my mind is that I have to pursue an internship and chose the best internship provider in India, Modlingua. I’m confident enough that I’ll gain related knowledge as much as I can from this internship and will continue to build my own empire and serve the society as well. Later I might also pursue Translation Management Course which will be very helpful if I want to climb the ladder of success in this vast field.
