By Imulok Marcus
About Modlingua
Modlingua Learning Pvt. Ltd. Or Modlingua is a company that is based in Delhi, India. It is certified to translate and interpret documents and text to meet the client needs. In 2017, it has taken 250 interns to complete its summer internship.
Summer Internship 2017
The internship was held virtually for two months from June to August in 2017. The basic requirements were to send a resume and a cover letter. I knew about the online internship through my university, Universiti Sains Malaysia, USM. On 31st of May, I received an email stating that among 466 applications received, I was among the 120 applicants that has been selected for Summer Internship 2017. I was elated to be chosen and look forward to be working with Mr. Ravi Kumar and other fellow interns.
The further content of the email was to familiarise myself with several topics in relation to the language business before starting the internship on the 7th June. The topics were business development, online marketing, social media marketing, project management, and entrepreneurship.
Purpose of the Internship
The focus of the summer internship was on Entrepreneurship and Professional Development of Translators, Interpreters and language professionals.
Orientation Day
A day before the orientation day, we were given several time slots to choose from. Since the internship take place virtually and there are a quite number of interns that reside outside of India. Mr Ravi Kumar had selected several different slots. As a Malaysian, I choose the 11:30 AM IST slot time which I confirmed on Modlingua Facebook group. We are also asked to register ourselves at Modlingua website in order to streamline our interaction with the trainees and other interns. We also use the Facebook group to introduce ourselves in one paragraph.
7 Assignments
First Assignment
Our first assignment was given on the 17th June. We were required to prepare our individual professional profile that has a profile picture, our educational qualifications including language skills, professional training or expertise, hobbies, professional goals, our employment status with Modlingua and lastly our chosen 4 areas where we would be focusing more on building our strength. There are also samples so we can have a clearer guideline on what to write.
Since I am doing English Language and Literature Studies in USM, I have chosen to focus on the 4 areas which are blogging, content writing and citizen journalism, project management and quality standards, and business development.
We then post our professional profile using the online option that the website has. This was done after the training session done by Mr. Ravi Kumar. He guided us throughout the process to using the online option. We used the GoToMeeting application to hear his guidance and ask any questions for further clarification about the summer internship. The application let anyone who uses it to mute or record the virtual meeting. The recorded meeting would be convenient for interns that could not make it to the meeting due to personal reasons.
Second Assignment
The second assignment was writing an article on making a difference as a multilinguist. The article was written to show the importance of being a multilinguist in citizen journalism. Before writing the second assignment, Mr Ravi Kumar had posted on the Facebook group about content writing citizen journalism. Interns were encouraged to comment their own views regarding it. The post had helped a lot for me to learn more about citizen journalism.
Third assignment
This time, Mr. Ravi Kumar explained about Google Search. Hence, I wrote about the importance of Google Search for multilingual writers. It is important for any company to be in the top search whenever a person searches the company using Google Search. For example, if someone searched for translation and Modlingua came as one of the top results in the first page, the company will be recognised as a relevant and its services will be used by the person. Whilst writing the assignment, we were also given other tasks such as promoting the YouTube channel for Modlingua.
Fourth assignment
The fourth assignment is about personal branding. We were fortunate to have a guest speaker, Professor Ionna Daskalopoulou. She was a thorough speaker and I understood her speech well. I learned why personal branding affects one’s career especially for both language professional and translator.
When writing, the fourth assignment, there are times when I could not make it to the deadline without jeopardising the content of my article. Mr. Ravi Kumar usually gives us 5-6 days to write the assignment. And the words requirement was 400 to 600 words. But the word limit was increased to 800 to 1000 words. Fortunately, the deadline was extended. This made me feel that our trainer Mr. Ravi Kumar understand our difficulties. I have also learned to prioritise my work.
Fifth Assignment
I also wrote about Quality Standards and its usefulness for language professionals, translators and service providers. To ensure the best results for any project, both language professionals and translators need to have a mutual agreement with their client over the quality standards. This is to ensure that the client is satisfied and at the same time ease their working experience.
Sixth Assignment
Project Management is the topic for the sixth assignment. It discusses about how to use project management to ensure the success of any project. During writing this assignment, I was able to reflect on it based on the summer internship. There were feedback given by Mr. Ravi Kumar whenever our assignments are published. He also posted on the Facebook group articles that help us to write better.
Final Assignment
The seventh assignment is to prepare a detailed report including several aspects which are a brief information about the internship, the purpose of the internship or the learning objectives, things that one have learned, comments about the teaching methodology, the expectations and how they are achieved or learning outcome and finally our own overall assessment and conclusion.
Teaching Methodology
Using several applications and social media such GoToMeeting, YouTube, Facebook and WhatsApp, the summer internship worked well among its local and international interns. Mr. Ravi Kumar had explained the assignments well enough through video conference and prepared a several suitable platforms for us to discuss them. There were feedback given to ensure high quality results. These feedback also helped us to monitor our progresses during the internship.
Learning Outcome
Through this Summer Internship, I have learned a lot of lessons. I was inspired by Mr. Ravi Kumar by his decision to take on more than 200 interns instead of 120 interns. It was a big and kind decision to give more interns the bigger chance to gain experience through this rare and unique opportunity.
I also learned to put in extra effort to meet the deadline especially when the workload has been added. In addition, I also was working as a part-timer. I learned to prioritise my work throughout the internship. The gaps between one assignment and another assignment sometimes made me reckless about managing my time. Having a lot of free time before the next assignment affects how I view my time.
It is also important to for the relevant information and rely more on the video lecture uploaded on the Modlingua YouTube channel. This is because there is expectation to watch the videos. Furthermore, Mr. Ravi Kumar explained the topics we are doing for our assignments clearly that we do not need to search information excessively.
Patience is also fostered while doing this internship. During the meeting, the internet connection can go bad or someone is interrupting the virtual meeting. This has affected the meeting in a way that we have to wait for a while for the meeting to resume normally. The working environment is also different because we are doing everything virtually. This enabled me to be flexible and be resourceful especially when I needed to connect to the Internet.
Overall Assessment and Conclusion
Overall, I had fun and gain a worthwhile experience during the summer internship. I did not regret making the decision to partake in this summer internship. It is a good opportunity for anyone who is interested in working with language and connecting to a group globally. Despite that, there are always a room for improvement for both the internship programme and the interns whether the programme is thoroughly explained in the beginning or some incentive may be given upon each assignment completed to motivate the interns to work harder. The interns especially myself who will need to be more discipline especially when it is an online working environment. We have to be more aware of about time management and being accessible in order to show our commitment towards this internship.
I also think personally that we reached the internship objective which is to develop the entrepreneurialism and professionalism in translators, interpreters and language professionals. As one of the interns of Modlingua Summer Internship, I am proud to be able to complete the training under Mr. Ravi Kumar and I look forward to hearing more good news from him and Modlingua.
http://modlingua.com/interns/339-imulok-marcus-intern-profile.html
