By Buch Soham Jayesh
 
Thoughts on opportunities for Linguists
Language, as a profession, has a lot of untapped market opportunities. As it is a developing nature of business a lot of new avenues are opening up. With the advent of time the boost to the open market economies supported the global village concept. The development of transportation means and global market opportunities increased the requirement of linguists not only for governments but also for the businesses and services that identify the world as an opportunity to trade for various requirements. Further, the internet and its applications have supported the concept of the charitable purposes that are now prevailing in the market for the development of market and understanding the requirements on various new fronts. Besides, for the research and development of new techniques the study of history and the societal practices the requirements of the language professionals have felt. The biggest service sector boom for language profession came from communication, media and entertainment industry and experts believe that it would continue to be so. The global fame of these avenues identified translation, interpretation, advertising, script writing etc. and many more as the areas a language professional can be employed. The latest development has been the training of the language. As the technology has influenced the way people use language, the society has come up with a mixture of many languages that is interpreted differently from the original meaning of the words. To look to the future there may be a requirement of a universal language as we face towards the space to achieve new milestones.
 
Entrepreneurship in Language business
Like many other businesses the language business has also an entrepreneurial side. Independent people, professionals, companies, and non-profit organizations now offer such services on commercial basis. Applying the principles of management language professionals can also provide their valuable inputs to the economy and earn their livelihood in their area of interest. Teamwork, understanding of business structure, nature of service expectations, co-ordination, finance, human resource management, and controlling is applied to get the maximum benefit.
Though most of the times the language businesses are based on projects. With the requirement of the project the setting of the business changes. For instance, for an advertising business, a news media company, a radio station and a publishing business demands a different kind of language talent and different management style. The literature and non-literature aspects of these works are also different and needs different styles of contracts. Even with the nature of industry the requirement of the pre-project and post project management also changes. It is true that for an individual who is new to such work it may be a difficult scenario to identify one’s area of focus, but with perseverance and continuous efforts it is possible.
 
Internship – with Translation Research company – Modlingua
Modlingua Learnings Pvt Ltd, an ISO 9001:2008 company, offered the learning opportunity to take a look into the language business for approximately a period of three months. The New Delhi, India based company is one of the famous companies, who employs only native language practitioners from all round the world to have guaranteed quality in translation. Highly qualified people using the latest tools available with professional efficiency has been a privilege learning the nitty-gritty of the industry best practices.
During this period our mentor, Dr. Ravi Kumar, helped in understanding the nature of business. He enlightened us with the opportunities in the business such as mass media, citizen journalism, translation and trans-creation, and entrepreneurship besides creating quality original subjective content. With it the crucial aspects of contract, understanding and managing the process, quality management and recognized practices of the field were also conveyed. Marketing of one’s work taking the advantage of digital platforms using various tools and techniques, establishing relations with clients and creating brand value were also made clear. Further, queries and client relationship management was also taught with relevant examples. Available technological support, its importance and limitations were also some of the essential aspects of the study. Legal side of the language projects, rights and responsibilities of a company providing services and client who is to be served were also useful part of the study. The conflict resolution and business process corrections were also made to provide the needed training for the interns.
In this regard, the classes were conducted online to support the global student base in form of video lectures. Sharing personal experiences by our mentor, keeping the sessions interactive through participants’ inputs, and inviting guests to support the study; he gave some of the best insights to enrich our learning experience. We were also provided with the importance of the management principles and their application with reference to the language business and its applications. A guest speaker from Greece, Prof. Ioanna Daskalopolou helped with learnings from her experience and practices as a language entrepreneurship for over 20 years. These made the studies more practical and useful. Any study is not complete without tests. To make sure that things are properly understood, we were provided with the assignments, which were checked and later published at the blog of the website. By this, interns were provided exposure into the professional website with good content where they can promote their wok. As a first assignment, the interns profile created and published supported the aspects of promoting their identity.
Some of the sample works titles are as follows:

• Wolf Pack Strategy for Translators and their network, Team management - http://modlingua.com/blogs/503-the-wolf-pack-strategy-and-its-perspective-for-translators-and-translator-networks.html
• Role of a linguist in a digital age - http://modlingua.com/blogs/608-role-of-linguist-in-the-digital-age.html
• Options for language professionals in modern market conditions - http://modlingua.com/blogs/684-options-for-the-language-professionals-in-the-modern-market-conditions.html
• Quality standards and its importance for language business - http://modlingua.com/blogs/752-quality-standards-for-language-businesses.html
• Project management to reach optimum efficiency for a language entrepreneur - http://modlingua.com/blogs/772-project-management-to-reach-optimum-efficiency-for-a-language-entrepreneur.html

Understanding the importance of Research Activities
Despite these activities internship included another important part – Research and promotion of work. For creating an original work of literature on a subject it requires careful research and observations. Interns were also availed good volumes of research and talks, lectures and important works by industry practitioners. It not only provided the form of research report preparation format, but also the kind of commitment and study required.
 
Public Service
The hard-work of such professional is made available for general public on various free to read and learn platforms. It was also made available in form of video lectures. Interns were also engaged to promote such work on the charitable basis. The subscription, usage and promotion of the websites resulted in promotion of work among general public. Furthermore, the company has also launched a systematic course of diploma in language management after successful completion of one of the kind internship tested first time in the Translation research company. With these efforts, the company is trying to support the dynamic society with the tools of translation management services provided world over through association with various language professionals world over. 

Experiences of Internship

It has been a demanding and learning period of time for me to continuously keeping the pace with the internship program. The quality of the learning experience has been excellent. Fulfilling tasks, attending meetings and keeping the deadlines have been a very realistic job experience. It helped to expand my horizon for employ-ability in language industry. With the help of our mentor, I have made a network of language professionals, associated with a lot of established practitioners and associations. This has made a significant progress in a short span of three months to my understanding and reach. The insights provided during the program has supported me with key information and provided with confidence to take new challenges. With continuous support from the mentors, and network along with my persistent efforts, I am confident that I would be able to establish myself as an entrepreneur in this business.
 
Author’s Profile
http://modlingua.com/interns/336-soham-gujarati-hindi-english-literary-works-ahmedabad.html