By Veer Kartik

The internship
While searching for an internship for the summer vacations, there it was, an internship with Modlingua. An opportunity to intern with one of the leading translation and interpretation services in India. Interns were selected from different parts of the world. It started on 7^th June 2017 and went on until the last week of August. Ravi sir organized several meetings in order to discuss various topics that were part of building our knowledge of the professional environment through the online platform GoToMeeting. He supervised these meetings as and when required. This was done so that no issue remains unresolved.

In our first assignment we had to create our professional profile at Modlingua to be able to access different resources and do our assigned work. Along with that profile we had to choose four areas in which we wanted to work and develop our skills. As an Intern, I chose to develop my skills in the areas of Content writing and Citizen Journalism, Business Development, Entrepreneurship, and Social Media Marketing. Then, we had to promote the Modlingua YouTube channel and our profiles on social media of our choosing, which I did through groups on social media. As for the second assignment, we had another meeting in which Ravi sir guided us to write a small article about networking in the translation industry, in which we had to relate with images, either of a wolf pack, or of ants working together and two other images, for which I chose the one consisting the wolf pack.  The third assignment was given to us after our conversation at the GoToMeeting platform that included Google Search Engine, relationship between Content writing, Online Marketing and translation, Globalization, Localization, Internationalization, and Translation of Content. We had to chose any one of these topics as assignment. In the fourth assignment, we had a conference, a lecture with Prof. Ioanna Daskalopolou about entrepreneurship and personal branding for translators. We were able to understand the differences between in-house translators and freelancers. With this assignment we had to write about the visibility of the language professional in the society, how to gain clients being freelancers, alternate options for language professionals, and relate this concept of power relations in society and position of a translator. In the fifth assignment, we had a meeting on Quality Standards and its connection to translation services, the development of various quality standards in Translation Process across the globe, the equal roles of linguistics and non-linguistics aspects in translation and the quality standards function in this balance. I wasn’t able to attend the meetings for the next assignments but the resources were available on Youtube. In fact, all assignments had Youtube links so that we could take guidance and complete our assignments.

This internship was a unique and a learning experience as it was my first, from the beginning of the internship, Ravi sir was clear about how the world outside looks like i.e. reality of a real job experience. With that, we had to finish our assigned work, attend meetings and do our work on time. This internship has helped me know more about the translation business and all the possibilities that it has, and as language professionals what one can achieve. It also assisted us in developing our communication skills with different people in the business and how to treat and obtain new clients.

This experience will surely help me when I am with the Paraguay U-17 team in the FIFA U-17 World Cup 2017. With this I hope to make more contacts in the industry through whatever I have learnt here. The insights provided during the program has supported me with key information and with numerous options to take new challenges.

Since the interns were from different areas of the world, it was in the best interest of everybody that Ravi sir took the lessons was online. Everything was done in a professional manner.Though I couldn’t attend all the meetings, I tried to keep up as much as possible. The internship was really interesting. My expectations were achieved. 

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.

Intern Profile: http://www.modlingua.com/interns/402-veer.html