By Sharmishtha Samal

About the Internship 

Starting from June, I have worked for Modlingua as a summer intern for one month as a proficient french and spanish speaker as well as learner. I have learned a lot from this internship especially about the dynamics of the translation industry, about how people make each other's work easier in a multicultural community and the language barriers that may arise during the process and the ways to counteract them and deal with them in the most efficient way.

Modlingua is certified by ISO 9001:2008 and provides various translation and interpretation services in a multitude of languages all over the world with their team of language professionals. The internship is designed to enable students to gain different perspectives on the global translation industry and an appreciation for the translation process, to understand why translation is steadily growing in importance with the globalization of information through the internet and social media and why it is important to be informed, trained, certified, educated, and in contact with language professionals all over the world. By extension, we noted the importance of developing skills in areas other than translation proper, including marketing, promotion, editing and proofreading, and how those skills increase your visibility in the translation market. In this edition of their summer internship, Ravi Kumar and his team combined these areas into six main lectures: Project Management, Quality Standards, Business Development, Entrepreneurship, and Social Media Marketing in translation. Our task was to gain knowledge and think critically about these subjects, which we addressed in corresponding assignments.

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. Guest lectures were introduced to us from time to time; out of a few guest lectures, one I remember the most and which left a remarkable impact on me was by Professor Ioanna regarding self-marketing and personal branding for translators. she was clear and concise when delivering her lecture and answering questions, with a lot of useful advice for all levels of translator, whether you are a novice with no formal training or experience, a freelance translator trying to expand their potential clientele, or an in-house translator looking to develop new skills and branch out into new domains. 

As for the platform for meetings we had aka GoToMeeting App, it was an efficient app. Mr. Ravi Kumar would set a time for the meeting based on a consensus through a voting system. We would all come live on the app at the designated time, the meetings were practical, as we could se the list of our peers who were present in the virtual meetings with us, and could speak and clear our doubts taking turns and Sir Kumar could effectively convey the agendas for each meeting to us in an easy manner. I really enjoyed these meetings.

Occassionnally, Sir Kumar would create informational videos regarding our assignments and upload them on the YouTube channel. This would make assignments drastically easer and e would have a better perspective on our agendas or projects. I have learnt a lot about translation from this internship. The prominent aspects of the business world of Translation industry, Marketing strategies, Freelancing vs. working for a defined industry in regard to translation as well as the language barriers that arise and how to deal with them the best way are amongst a few of the skills that I had the privilege to learn from this passionate internship program. The only problems came from having so many people active at one time across time zones, but nonetheless, we limited the number of webcams and microphones in use simultaneously, which seemed to help get rid of some of the problems with the network. The lectures were comprehensive and extensive: , a lot of effort was put into the delivery and preparation of the slide shows.

Another key aspect of the internship was– 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.
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. 

Our internship at Modlingua.com under the guidance of Mr. Kumar was a huge opportunity for us as language students and was overall a very knowledgeable and an enriching experience. It helped to become aware of our true caliber. It further helped develop our content writing skills through the activity of blog writing. Also, it increased our visibility online thereby adding to the self-confidence of each intern. Also, it gave us access to the network of language learners and enthusiasts and thus access to information regarding our fields of study.  I would take this opportunity to thank Mr. Kumar for his initiative as it provided us the opportunity to experience working as an intern.