Ever wondered what makes young people get into the localization industry? 🚀 We talked to 5 juniors – Abril, Anastasiia, Ä°lker, Nicole, and Wiktoria – about their reasons and this is what they said!
Abril Ughetti
It’s funny because when I was younger, I wanted to be a dentist, but I met a friend of my mother, and she is an English and English translator, and she has the translation company. And when I started to see her and what she was doing, she attended do congresses, she traveled a lot. She had like all these Boss Lady personality. And I told my mom, I want to do what she does. And then I realized that I love languages, especially English. And I also realized that I was intrigued about different cultures and all that stuff. So well. Then when I graduated from high school, I decided to get into the English translation track, let’s say, and well, here I am, I think the love for languages and the love for different cultures are like two really boring components if you want to work in the localization industry. And I think it’s something that at some point motivates everyone working here.
Anastasiia Laktionova
Well, I’ve always been passionate about languages. And my studies and my career have so far revolved around languages in this industry. Yeah, and we’re connected to it from you know, one angle or another, though, what attracted me the localization industry, specifically is that it has a variety of roles to offer, depending on your skills and passions. So if you like languages, but you also, you know, have strong communication skills, or analytical skills or more technical skills, you’re interested in, you know, programming and more technical stuff, there’s something for everybody, really. So you can, you know, choose something that suits you, but at the same time, still work with languages, if you’re into that. And yeah, I think that’s really, really cool.
Ä°lker Erverdi
I wasn’t a very sociable, sociable boy. So I always stay in my home play video games, like probably most probably compensative mouse ones like this, or League of Legends or stuff like that at the beginning of my gaming era. So I was already into games, I consumed a lot of content, TV series movies, so I loved content as well. Like when I started university, I already chose my department in Translation and Interpreting study. So I kind of knew where I was going. And before I graduated, I saw a firm that just focused on localization. And I said, like, Okay, this is nice. I love games. I love translation as well, because still, like, I know, pretty good English, kinda kind of fluent in it. Like, I don’t speak too much. So I’m having like, stops here and there, but I know English very well. But still now, when I watch TV series or movies, I still watch them with Turkish subtitles, because I love to criticize subtitles. Like, it’s just, it’s not pleasant to watch anything with me, because I’m always like five seconds, a subtitle, I’m like, Okay, this is wrong, this could have been better, we need to do something about it. Like, it’s just it’s not a pleasant experience. So that’s why I started to work in localization.
Nicole Anne Araullo
My interest in pursuing a career in the localization industry started when I had an introduction to linguistics and translation class where we research existing materials that were translated from English to Tagalog, and vice versa. And we actually had to identify which translation method methods were used on. I realized through that class that translations are so powerful beyond what consumers can comprehend that our choice of translation method can affect how a certain book or movie or app will appeal to the target audience. Now aside from that, I got to appreciate other translator translators work as well, because I feel like it is only when you do translation, work yourself that you will realize how challenging and time consuming it is to translate from one language to another. Even if you are fluent into different languages, that doesn’t mean that you can effortlessly and effectively translate meanings.
Wiktoria Agnyziak
Honestly, there was no like motivation at all. Because me starting a career in the localization industry was a complete like coincidence, a recruiter actually hit me up on LinkedIn with a job opportunity. And I was working at a translation agency at the time, but I was working in sales. So I had nothing to do with the actual, like, translation processes. I was just doing numbers. So you know, I like the job, you know, and I thought it was it was time for a change for me. So I took it. That’s how I ended up at the job that I’m currently at. However, I always loved film. I’m a big like, cinema freak. And I love watching movies and TV shows like all the time, and I was really, really interested in dubbing for a few years now translation as well. I wanted to be a translator I do right now as well, but maybe in the future, cuz right now I just wants to do the job that I’m at right now and pursue it and all. So no motivation at first. But now I have all the motivation in the world to pursue my career even further because I really love what I do.
