By Leonardo Faig
About the Internship
Modlingua Internship had a duration of 3 months, starting on June 7th until August 25th. During this internship, we had weekly meetings via GoToMeeting (an app specifically for conferences. Something similar to Skype). In those meetings, we learnt how to create a profile in Modlingua website and promote ourselves in different social medias. After that, we had a total of 7 assignments to be done during the Internship. We also had to choose four areas that we would focus during the time with Modlingua. My areas were: Project Management and Quality Standards, Business Development, Entrepreneurship, and Social Media Marketing
In this first assignment (and also in the other ones) we always had to follow a pattern of formatting (like using a specific type of writing, for example), and send via Modlingua session of submitting articles. We also learn how to attach our picture with the profile so people could see who we are. In the second assignment, we had another meeting we Mr. Kumar asked us to make an analysis about a picture. We had two examples of pictures: the first one was about a wolf pack and their strategy of moving between places. It is a interesting picture, because it had more than one meaning if you look for it on internet. The second picture was about ants and how they help each other to do their jobs. The most important thing in both pictures is teamwork and how we deal with our co-workers.
In the third assignment, we had a meeting and learned the importance of web search engines and how to deal with this amount of information we received from websites like Google Search, and the importance of the engines for the translators. We also had a brief about Online Marketing. In the fourth assignment, we had a meeting and learned about personal branding, visibility in society and how to tell people about our quality of work. Very important for translators that are beginning their career.
In the fifth assignment we had a meeting and learned the importance of quality standards (not just for translators, but in a lot of areas of work you can think of), to keep your company or work (as a freelancer) with a certain pattern of quality. For the sixth assignment, we had a meeting and learned the importance of Project Management and Project Management Tools. All the great things we can do with the softwares, that is a great complement for the CAT Tools. Project Management Tools are a great help for bigger projects and big companies.
Every week we finished an article, Mr. Kumar suggested us to read the articles of other interns and share with people that might like this kind of information. This is a way of promoting ourselves and our partners. We also had videos on YouTube to guide us through the weeks. The videos were made by Mr. Kumar. They were really helpful for us.
It was interesting to know how to use the tool to create text and post on the blog as well. I normally used google drive to save my work automatically and posted after that on Modlingua website. Then I could make my personal adjustments.
Teaching Methodology
Since the interns are from different areas of the world, the best way to take the lessons is online. We used GoToMeet app to talk with Mr. Kumar about each topic every week. Sometimes we had two meetings in a week. He used slides to guide us, since it is easier to learn something with visual content. Besides that, every time we had a question, we could simply ask him via microphone.
Since the internship was taken by people of different countries (like I said before), Mr. Kumar divided each meeting in three shifts with different times. This happened because of the time zone. It could be really difficult for someone from Brazil, for example, to take a meeting in the middle of the dawn. I personally took the morning shifts (starting at 11 AM), and because of the difference of 8 and a half hours from New Delhi, it was night time there. It was a great idea to reach more and more people.
Even though, there is times when we just could not participate of the meeting, for some reason. Mr. Kumar had to deal with a lot of people (around 200), and sometimes a person could feel lost in some explanation, or simply don’t understand what he or she had to do, or which time they had to take the lessons. It is complicated to deal with too many people. Because of that, Mr. Kumar made videos on YouTube for three reasons:
1 - For those who just could not participate of the meeting, for some reason.
2 - For people who participated of the meeting, but they had some question they didn’t solve or something just appeared after the meeting, and they want to study a little bit more to do an assignment.
3 - For people (outsiders) that might be interested in the subject. One of our duties was to share the channel and also the video in different social medias so other people could check Modlingua website and their work.
Besides that, we had an interesting discussion with a teacher and researcher from Greece. She gave us a brief about CAT Tools and marketing of translation. In my opinion, this is really important. That is because most of the time you try to learn something about translation (mostly in universities in Brazil), they don’t prepare us to work. They just prepare us to teach or to study about some subjects. This is something that I tried to do by myself since the beginning of the course, but a lot of people have this issue: How do we insert ourselves into the market? How to make our personal branding? How to find clients and a good company? Should I try to do by myself, being a freelancer? Should I use CAT Tools? Which ones?
I’m doing an extensive research in CAT Tools at my university in Brazil. This meeting was interesting for me, and also to have the opportunity of talk with a professional of other country, trying to see and reach different minds and ideas.
Expectations
I took the internship because I want to learn more and more about the subject and also because It is mandatory to take an internship at the end of my course in Brazil. My expectations were good. I was wondering what kind of information about technology and economy I would learn and also the environment of a company, talking to other people and being guided for someone who understands the issue.
I found the assignments really interesting. I really enjoyed making the texts for the blog and sharing the information for friends and people from the area of translation. I could see how it works in practical world, not just in theories inside the classroom. This contact with professionals make us professionals as well. The internship was really interesting because of that. My expectations were achieved.
Personal Evaluation
This Internship was a great experience for me. I had another vision of market, I learned how to promote myself and also promote the field of translation. A field that is really huge and a lot of people don’t know the possibilities.
Writing the texts were a challenge for me and probably for a lot of people there. In college we usually do the practical work: translate things. But writing about translation in different fields (like marketing, economics and technology) was interesting, difficult and important as well. It was important to train our skills with passing information for other people. I shared my texts with other translators and people from those areas, and they thought it was a good job. This is important to me as a professional.
The translator have to know a little bit about everything and keep up with the technology, that is evolving more and more every day. We need it, otherwise different professionals will be ahead of us. We also need to know how to deal with our partners, and that it is important to have co-workers. Doing that, we can grow together. Modlingua helped me how to clear my vision and guided me through this path. I hope we can have other courses or internships with Modlingua like this one, so I could improve myself a little bit more.
About Modlingua
“Modlingua Learning Pvt. Ltd.” New Delhi, India. Founded by Ravi Kumar, Modlingua is a leading translation company certified by ISO 9001:2008 that provides translation and interpretation services in various language pairs. Their members took several courses to improve their skills with both languages (source language and target language) or and great part of them are native speakers in the source language. Modlingua is always keen on new technologies and keeping up with the latest news about the subject in the matter.
