By Yakshita Arora

My name is Yakshita ARORA and I am from Delhi. I am presently a student of Masters in French from DELHI UNIVERSITY. Also, I am pursuing C1 level from Alliance Francaise de Delhi.

 My aspirations were quite high before the starting of the internship. I wanted to have exposure to the worldwide level of translation and wanted to have an experience in the field of interpretations well. I wanted to grow a global personality for which I need to excel in my translation and interpretation skills.

But the internship turned out to be more than that, it had more than I had expected. Studying isn’t enough until one bags some work experience in the relevant field. This is why I wanted a concrete working experience in linguistics field to help my future plans. However, having a strong opinion of my aspirations, I certainly never wanted to limit myself to my career goals. Restraining myself on one definite ambition will constrain me from exploring other opportunities.
 
The summer internship for translators at Modlingua 2018 was for a duration of three months, from June to August. We had a lot of online interactions with our mentor, Mr.Ravi Kumar, who under his guidance made sure that we work to the best of our abilities. We used to have live interactions on Facebook, Whatsapp interactions, and also we had our own modlingua channel which served as a guiding platform not only for each and every assignment but also on the social aspects of today’s world. He is a true motivation to work, encouraged all the interns to interact and work in a group. This internship has helped me not only to ameliorate myself in the professional field but also as a person as this internship has given me an opportunity to work with people with different professional and cultural backgrounds.

All the assignments given to us were greatly organized. We had 8 assignments in total. 

The first assignments were the analysis of errors and omission in content writing. This assignment was aimed to rectify our own mistakes while writing an article. We used the modlingua rubric provided by Mr. Ravi Kumar in order to use it as a guiding outline of how to make an article effective, impactful, and coherent. An article should not have grammatical mistakes. It is the suggestion of how to correctly analyze the errors, he also explained to me the use of Grammarly, an application that helps to rectify the grammar mistakes in a passage. I did prepare a presentation on that as well.

The second assignment was on the importance of quality control in content writing and translation. This assignment gave us an insight into what being a good translator is all about. One can be a translator, but for being a good one, one has to be efficient in his / her own work, rectifying it side by side and being aware of the small nuances while translating. This assignment included the correction of our own written material submitted earlier.

The third assignment focused on the transcription of the videos uploaded on  modlingua’s YouTube channel. Each one us were to choose a video and make its transcripts.

The fourth assignment was the most interesting one. We were asked to add subtitles to the video we had previously chosen for transcripts. We were free to do the transcripts in any language. I did it both in English and in French. This was altogether a new experience. We learned how to add subtitles to the videos and making sure that the timing is absolutely right.

The fifth assignment was the social media marketing. We were given four questions related to the social media platforms for which we had to prepare an answer in detail.

The sixth assignment was the script writing. The script was to be on any of the famous personality related to the translation industry. It had to be a video script. So the tasks given to us were basically to get the best out of us and so that at the end of the internship we are actually a professional and no more a fresher in this professional world. I decided to write the script on Sherry Simon.

The seventh assignment was on any of the famous business personality. The idea of the internship was very evident from the very beginning that was to make experts in every domain.

The eighth was the last and the final assignment which was a final project report of what all we did and what all learnt in the due course of this internship, how it helped me, etc…

I enjoyed each and every assignment I did. It was an all the time learning process. I learnt how to add subtitles, about different famous personalities, the social media marketing concept and how does it work. I also learnt about citizen journalism for which we had a video by Mr Ravi Kumar on our MODLINGUA youtube channel. I volunteered many times, I worked out of my own will, created the subtitles for the video in both the languages, in French as well as in English, whereas it was not compulsory. At the end of this internship if I see I learnt a lot of new things. Above all, it was an online internship which permitted me to be a little flexible with timings. I don’t feel there are advantages in an online internship. And one could actually manage to finish this internship successfully along with other things along with. But it does require time and attention. Though everything was not perfect for me, I was struggling with the deadlines as I was occupied with other things at times, but at my level, tried to maintain seriousness in my work.

Since Modlingua’s internship provided a great opportunity which focuses specifically on the agenda of ‘teamwork’, and also only individual responsibility, one has a good opportunity to excel in a number of domains.

My experience at modlingua was amazing and an illuminating one.  Working in a team helped me to understand my own capacities and interests. We were majorly in contact with Mr. Ravi Kumar,  the assignments so well structured clearly demonstrates his efforts along with that of the modlingua team. I believe that working at modlingua gave me a boost and practical experience that enhanced my overall personality and psychological determination. I wanted to work in the corporate sector and being an intern at Modlingua was very helpful to enhance my translation and interpretation skills which are required in the corporate sector. Modlingua had given me the opportunities to take up such tasks that I did not even expect that I would do such things in my life.
I would always be grateful for life to Modlingua and to Mr. Ravi Kumar for offering me such an opportunity which has helped me to ameliorate on a professional as well as on a personal level.