Recordings
Watch recordings of online discussions with Middlebury Institute experts on a wide range of topics.
Development
Peacebuilding and Reconciliation in the Balkans
Dr. Thor Sawin leads a fieldwork program for Middlebury Institute students to the Balkans to explore the events after the breakup of Yugoslavia and analyze the roles identity, religion, language, and political ideology played in the conflict. Dr. Sawin will discuss what his students discovered in the most recent trip and share how some of the ideologies in the time period leading up to the breakup of Yugoslavia are still present today. He will compare and contrast what has been effective in transforming the postconflict societies that they visited.
Empowering Change: Aligning International Policies with Sustainable Development Goals
Join professors Dr. William Arrocha and Dr. Scott Pulizzi, faculty from the International Policy and Development program, as they engage in a dialogue about the challenges faced by the Global South, as well as the dominant international policies originating from key Global North countries, new players like China and BRICS, and institutions such as the World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO.
Supporting Homeless Services with Data Science
The Middlebury Institute META Lab is evaluating the Coordinated Assessment and Referral System (CARS) on behalf of the Coalition of Homeless Services Providers (CHSP). The final report will help CHSP to measure how well the CARS system meets its compliance and effectiveness goals, as well as help explore the areas of greatest strengths and shortcomings, which will be utilized to suggest improvements to the program’s policies, procedures, and community investment.
Impactful Relationship Building with Central California Indigenous Community Partners
Hear from Professor Netta Avineri on how the Institute works with the Costanoan Rumsen Carmel Tribe on land use, recognition, and other social justice issues.
Women in International Trade
Join International Trade Alumnae as they share their experiences and impressive careers in the ever-expanding field.
International Trade, Inflation, and the Global Economy
Join Professor Robert Rogowsky of the International Trade program and Ed Brzytwa, vice president of trade for the Consumer Technology Association, who will discuss the connection between international trade, supply chains, inflation, and what economic impacts to expect in the next year.
International Policy on the West Coast
Join Dr. Beryl Levinger as she explains why the Middlebury Institute is an excellent place to launch your career, whether your path leads to D.C. or another center of international activity.
Education
Enhancing Global Learning through Inclusion and Belonging
Join Dr. David Wick, our online International Education Management program chair, and faculty member Dr. Ximena Ospina to explore how inclusion and belonging shape learning experiences at home and abroad.
Creating Engaging Online Learning Spaces
Asynchronous doesn’t mean alone! TESOL professor and program chair Jason Martel demonstrates strategies for designing interactive online courses highlighting inclusivity and community-building in asynchronous spaces.
Exploring Social Justice in Language Education
Dr. Netta Avineri and Dr. Deniz Ortactepe from the TESOL and Teaching Foreign Language programs explore the diverse ways that social justice and language education are connected. They describe what social justice in language education is and show you how you can focus on this area. They also discuss their own research, projects, and initiatives that you can get involved with.
Kalina Swanson:
Hi everyone. My name is Kalina Swanson and I will be your host for today’s webinar. I’m currently completing my fourth semester here at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, with a major in teaching English to speakers of other languages and a specialization in language program administration.
Thank you for joining us live today. We’re glad to have you. I’d also like to thank those of you who are watching this recording on the webinar later on. So now I’m going to tell you guys a little bit about my experience with social justice and language education. Here at MIIS, I’ve worked on several projects related to this topic. Each year, for example, our program holds a foreign language education symposium, which is basically a day filled with presentations from language teachers from our community. Last year, I was fortunate enough to have worked on the organizing committee for this conference, and we decided to name the conference Social Justice in Language Education. Dr. Deniz Ortactepe and Netta Avineri were also highlighted in the conference as well. I was also able to take a class from Dr. Deniz Ortactepe, entitled Language Teaching for Social Justice. We did many projects in the class. So we workshopped lesson plans and we adapted a unit of the textbook to include themes related to social justice. So that’s a little bit about my background as a student that’s interested in language education and social justice.
Now I’d like to introduce two of the leading scholars in the field. So we have Dr. Netta Avineri, who is an associate professor of the MA TESOL/TFL program at MIIS, where she serves as the intercultural competence committee chair. She also teaches critical service learning and teacher education courses at California State University, Monterey Bay. She is the author of the 2017 book, Research Methods for Language Teaching and the coeditor of the 2019 book, Language and Social Justice in Practice. She is a series author editor for critical approaches and applied linguistics and chair of the American Association for Applied Linguistics, Public Affairs, and Engagement Committee.
We also have with us today Dr. Deniz Ortactepe, who is an associate professor in the MA TESOL/TFL program as well. Deniz is also the coordinator of the graduate writing center here at MIIS. Her research interests are second language socialization, intercultural pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and social justice language teaching. She has published in international journals, such as language teaching, teaching and teacher education, and language and intercultural communication. Along with fellow faculty members, Dr. Jason Martel, Deniz is guest editing the TESOL journal’s 2020 special issue entitled, Exploring the Transformative Potential of English Language Teachers for Social Justice.
In today’s webinar, we will address the following questions: How do you each define social justice, how do you each see how social justice connects with language and language education, and what kinds of social justice projects are you involved with? What projects are your TESOL/TFL colleagues working on? At the end of the talk, you will have time to ask questions that you have for Deniz and Netta. And remember that you can ask those questions in the chat box at any time during this presentation. Now let’s hear more from our professors in terms of what they do and how they pair future language teachers to confront issues of social justice. So to remind you all the first question is, how do you each define social justice?
Netta Avineri:
So the first thing that I think about is collaboration. When we think about social justice in particular, how do we collaborate to ensure that our societal needs and wants are being met for everyone in society? That includes full and equal participation of everyone in society. That includes equitable distribution of resources and access to those resources as well as opportunities for equity.
What that involves, really, is recognizing that any social problem or social issue manifests or happens at micro, mezzo, and macro levels, meaning at the small scale, at the institutional or systemic level, and also at the structural or the big-picture level. So examples of these systemic injustices might be things like poverty, the criminal justice system, thinking about issues like access to interpreters in healthcare settings, issues like immigration or the census, voting, literacy, the language we use in legal settings. All of these are components of how we ensure that everyone in society has their needs and their wants being met. And so in order to work towards social justice, we need to recognize what are the root causes of systemic inequity. And that means looking at histories, experiences, and how society is structured. What that means is who has power, who has privilege, and who is being oppressed and marginalized. And in order to move towards social justice, we recognize the root of the root of those issues, and then how do we build transformative solutions and collaboration with everyone who’s involved?
Deniz Ortactepe:
Okay. Hi, Kalina, and hello everyone who’s joining us today. I think this is a very good question to begin with, and Netta has done a good job talking about the key concepts related to social justice. I’ll talk about my own understanding of social justice. The way I see social justice is it’s both a noun and the verb. So when we talk about social justice as a noun, it refers to equality, equity care, and respect for diversity. And as a verb, it refers to a process of social action. So it needs to be a goal and it needs to be a process at the same time. And elaborate on this. Think about, imagine you’re teaching social justice issues to your students, and you talk about all the injustices in the world or in their society. What’s going to happen eventually is that you will cultivate feelings of helplessness, hopelessness, or you’ll leave them in despair.
So you don’t want that. You don’t want them to feel helpless in the face of these challenges. You want to cultivate a sense of agency and a sense of social change. So to wrap all this up, I think my understanding of social justice in the context of schooling is that providing equitable and inclusive schooling and educational opportunities by examining issues such as race, ethnicity, gender, and sexual identities and ability and et cetera, but while at the same time, cultivating a sense of empowerment, agency, and a sense of social change.
Kalina Swanson:
Great. Thank you guys. So our second question is, how do each of you see how social justice connects with language and language education? So Netta, I think you can start us off again.
Netta Avineri:
Sure. So the first thing that I think about is the fact that language is both a medium and the message, right? So it’s the way, it’s the how, in terms of how we express ourselves and it’s also the content of what we’re sharing. And so when we think about language and social justice, consider any social issue that we’re aware of in society, and then think about how language might be connected to that. So examples that my colleagues and I have worked on in the past include things like sports team mascot names. How are individuals and indigenous peoples being represented when we look at sports teams, for example. Issues like bilingual education, which languages are taught, which languages aren’t, which languages are valued in society. The notion of the language gap and whether we’re really thinking about marginalized populations in the appropriate ways.
When we use the word illegal to refer to immigrant populations and how that connects with notions of race and racism. Census categories, and how we decide how people count, if they count, if we’re making sure that everyone is counted. And other things like indigenous and endangered languages and the marginalization that’s involved in that. And also social media and media representations of different cultural groups, including things like #blacklivesmatter and things of that nature.
So in the edited volume that my colleagues and I had the opportunity to work on, we featured 24 case studies of language and social justice in practice in order to explore how these two components are really intertwined. So you have social justice issues that then you connect language to, and then you look at language issues and think about how social justice connects in that way. Some additional ways to think about it, I mentioned previously, looking at social issues at micro, mezzo, and macro levels: so at the small scale, institutional, and at the more structural big-picture level. So I’ll just include a number of other examples that are more general, but things like our identities, our experiences, histories, our intercultural interactions with other individuals. And Deniz will talk more about what this looks like in the classroom in terms of curricular planning. But things like, how do we differentiate for all the students in our language classrooms? How do we plan lessons to encourage their critical thinking? How do we select materials to make sure that all groups of people are represented?
At the mezzo level, if we’re thinking about institutional structures, so which language policies do we have in our classrooms? Do we allow students to, what’s called trans-language, meaning code switch among different languages? And what does that mean about what we believe around which languages should be valued? And at the macro level, when we really think about how much English is learned and taught and how much other languages are or are not learned and taught and the power dynamics more broadly globally at the global scale in terms of which languages people value and which ones have some cultural capital. And then the last component, just at the macro level, is really thinking about histories of oppression and colonization and the structural inequalities that exist in the communities and the regions where we work and teach. So I like to really think about it at these different levels and then see how those levels connect with each other to really recognize how important language is as both a medium and a message as it relates to social justice.
Deniz Ortactepe:
This is yet another good question, Kalina, and this is a question that I always receive when I talk about the work that I do. The question usually goes as, why should I talk about social justice issues in my classes, and what does social justice have to do with language teaching anyways? And, of course, there is a very long answer to this, but I’ll give you a very short response by giving you an example. So you mentioned that you took the course that I offered at MIIS, Language Teaching for Social Justice. And we talked about PARSNIP. I wonder if anybody else joining us online today has heard the term, the acronym, PARSNIP. So PARSNIP stands for no politics, no alcohol, no religion, no narcotics, no isms and no sex and no pork. And this is the tested agreement that textbook companies agreed upon to ensure marketability because they market, they produce these, or they sell these products, the textbooks in this context, to different countries all over the world.
So they avoid these so-called taboo subjects, but we need to ask, “Okay, instead of these subjects, what do they represent? Who do they represent? Whose voice do they include in the textbooks?” So this is what we did a lot in the course last semester. We looked at a particular textbook and we analyzed it and we examined the ways that we can adapt it to be more inclusive, to differentiate more, and et cetera.
So if you have a quick look at these textbooks, you will see that everybody’s happy, healthy, able-bodied, and you will see lots of heterosexual families. You won’t see any LGBTQ members. You won’t see anybody with a disability. You will see masculine men in firefighting positions, and you will see women in secretarial jobs. So I don’t see, giving a response to your question, I don’t see social justice as something that we bring to the classroom. It already exists. It’s part of our teaching, it’s part of our curriculum. It’s a part of our schooling. So everything that’s involved in the education process, it has some a connection with social justice issues. So once you start asking these questions, who is represented, who is included, whose voice is heard, and whose voice is silenced, you will see that social justice actually belongs to our classrooms.
Kalina Swanson:
Great. Thank you. And so we have one more question before the audience can ask questions, and just a reminder, you guys can type those questions in the chat box below. The last question for you both is what kinds of social justice projects are you involved with and what are your TESOL/TFL colleagues working on?
Netta Avineri:
Well, thanks for asking. Deniz and I get a chance to work on all kinds of great collaborations with one another and with other colleagues, both here at MIIS and also in other institutions around the globe. So as Kalina mentioned, we had our foreign language education symposium. That is a student-run conference that you get guidance from the faculty members—in particular, our program chair, Dr. Kathi Bailey, oversees the student group who puts the conference together. And as Kalina mentioned, the theme this year was social justice and language education, which really was symbolizing the students’ interest in really exploring what that looks like and really providing a forum for local teachers in the Monterey Bay region to really explore what this looks like in their own teaching. In terms of the kinds of things that I’ve had a chance to work on with other colleagues, all of these have been really collaborative endeavors.
The first is called the community solutions lab, and it’s work that we’re doing in the local region with a city called Gonzales. And I had a chance to work on a project, looking at immigration policies with K–8 students, what that looked like in terms of how they were perceiving how the policies were impacting their day-to-day. And we’re also having a focus moving forward with the city, on sociolinguistic justice. So things like making sure that there’s access to interpreters and making sure that there is a multilingual environment for everyone to grow up in. The city just won the Robert J. Wood Foundation Award for all of the work, incredible work they’re doing with youth. So that’s a collaboration that we’re doing with the city.
Another project I had the chance to work on with colleagues was in the META Lab—that’s another thing here at MIIS, where we were looking at women experiencing homelessness and really trying to really understand their experiences and their stories and looking at the language that’s used by them and others to represent their experience.
A couple of others, I’ll just mention to give you a sense of the kinds of things that you could do. One is called Middlebury Social Impact Core, and we’re continuing our partnership with a group that’s called Impact Monterey County to do interviews in multiple languages around all kinds of public health, then other kinds of social justice issues around access to education in the county. And students, both from MIIS and Middlebury, are involved in that. And I’ve worked also with colleagues on writing about things like sports team mascot names and the “language gap” and bilingual education to various forums like Huffington Post and other pieces like that, to try to engage diverse audiences and collaboration and discussion around these topics. And as mentioned previously, I’ve done different kinds of publications with others as well.
In terms of some things that our colleagues are doing—before Deniz has a chance to share all that she’s been working on—some things that our colleagues have been doing in addition to our teaching in our various courses is a set of publications that Dr. Kathi Bailey is working on around teaching English in underresourced regions. We have our colleague, Dr. Heekyeong Lee, who’s working on a project looking at North Korean refugee experiences. And our colleague, Dr. Thor Sawin, is looking at language policies focused on the notion of what he’s calling hospitality as it relates to language education. And our colleague, Dr. Renée Jourdenais, is also working in her courses and as Deniz mentioned, Jason Martel, on the kinds of issues that you can look at in your courses themselves. So there’s all kinds of interesting things that we get to do, and that we offer the opportunity to work on together.
Deniz Ortactepe:
I would like to talk about a project that I’m actually carrying out in Turkey. The title of the project is Social Justice in English Language Teaching and it’s U.S. embassy in Ankara, State Department-funded project. So I’m working with a colleague at Sinop University in Turkey. And our goal, when we started this project in August 2018, was to educate the language teachers, preservice English language teachers, about social justice issues. But also talk about social justice issues in their classes, but also talk about how to integrate these issues into the classes. So when we began the project, we visited four universities in Turkey and in four different cities. And we talked about what social justice language teaching is, how to integrate social justice issues into the classrooms, and what social justice problems that we have in Turkey.
And another purpose of these visits was to work with participants. So once we had our participants, we did four webinars. And the webinars covered issues such as environmental education and environmental justice, gender equality, LGBTQ-inclusive pedagogy, immigration, and peacebuilding. And at the end of every webinar, we asked the participants to write lesson plans, like you did in the course last semester, with language content and social justice objectives. And we also asked them to write reflective blogs, because I believe that any social justice work starts with yourself, with who you are, and with questioning your own identity and your own privilege and power. And then you can go from there and expand your circle. And once we were done with these trainings, we asked the participants to carry out their own social responsibility projects. And this was the most satisfactory part of the project for me, because we had a chance to see what they could do with the knowledge and the skills that they learned from the project.
So I want to give a couple of examples from the students’ projects. For instance, one of them worked on a United Nations global goals toward sustainable development to ninth grade students for about nine to 10 weeks. And the other one did a short movie on gender equality, more about reverse gender roles. So it was a very short movie. And another one did drama with fourth graders and fifth graders, working again on gender issues, using the children’s book titled Paper Bag Princess. So the storybook actually tells a different story than we are used to—the prince doesn’t save the princess. But the princess saves the prince in this context. But they don’t live happily ever after, unlike the other children’s books that we are familiar with.
And another one interviewed four immigrant women in Turkey, and she published their stories in a storybook to be used in language classes. And these storybooks were so powerful. For instance, because they weren’t only about immigration, they weren’t only about gender issues, there was also LGBTQ issues involved in it. So they underlined intersectionality, that we cannot look at issues from one perspective, but there are lots of angles to approach a problem or an issue in society. So we were really proud of their projects, and this year, we are actually working with a new cohort of students and we have started doing our seminars and webinars again. And we look forward to the products and we are holding a two-day-long symposium in May. This is going to be the second symposium on social justice. So that’s a very extensive project in that sense.
Kalina Swanson:
Thank you both for answering those questions. And now it looks like we have a few questions from the audience members. One of the audience members is asking you both to elaborate on how to encourage critical thinking within the classroom, especially around social justice and with students heading to college. So it looks like K–12 context. So can either of you, or both of you answer that question? Thank you.
Netta Avineri:
I mean, I think a really important component of encouraging critical thinking is ongoing reflection during the course itself. So as you’re bringing up social justice topics to really have students recognize and think through how they are emotionally, analytically reacting to what’s being presented to them and to really involve them in the process with very particular prompts. I talk a lot about, and I share this with my students too, the difference between big R reflections and small r reflections. So big R reflection is the very structured prompts that you can give students as opposed to small r reflection is just like thinking in the shower, on your way to work, or something that we do all the time. But really setting aside time during class to talk about your reactions, think through what is my own experience, my own identity, my own positionality, as it relates to what’s being discussed in class. I think that’s a really important component of it.
And to therefore take a little bit of the temperature of the room as you are introducing concepts. I know a lot of the work that I do is service learning, meaning that students are working with communities and then coming to class to process what’s happening within communities. And so a lot of what we’re doing in classes, both conceptual and giving them content and information, but a lot of it is really processing what’s happening and how they want to make sense of themselves as professionals or as academics or as just students and human beings. So I would say the best thing would be to pace yourself. I leave a lot of space in my syllabi for flex weeks so that I don’t have everything already programmed, to really be sensitive to and responsive to how they’re reacting to social justice topics.
Deniz Ortactepe:
I can add a couple of words. I agree with Netta. But going back to what I discussed earlier in relation to language and social justice, I don’t see critical thinking as something that you can do once during the semester and you expect your students to have that. It’s embedded into the activities that you have. So you don’t need, necessarily need to do a special activity for critical thinking. But when they are reading something, when they look at a picture, asking genuine questions—not pseudo questions—asking genuine questions about the text, about the pictures, about who’s doing what, who is shown in the photos.
And once they get into that habit of asking maybe more problem-solving questions rather than pseudo questions, then it will gradually develop. I remember, I think it was in your course, Kalina, one of the students said that now that they have this critical thinking, or they keep asking critical questions to the things that they hear, or they listen, or they’re exposed to, that it’s impossible to go back because that becomes part of you, that becomes part of who you are, that you cannot actually avoid seeing things from a more critical perspective.
Kalina Swanson:
Great, thank you. Our next question is, in which MIIS classes am I able to explore issues of social justice and language education? So each of you can answer that or maybe just one.
Netta Avineri:
Sure. So in addition to the wonderful elective that Deniz has developed around these issues in particular, we have courses where social justice is folded in throughout the class. So one example would be sociolinguistics, which is a course that’s a required course for all of our first semester students. And we’re looking at all kinds of issues around power and policy and which languages are taught and all of those issues that we were raising earlier. So we have a number of faculty who teach that course. Another course that I teach is called Service Learning: International and Domestic Community Partnerships, where we’re really looking at what does it look like to be a practitioner of service learning programs and what are all of the dynamics, both good and problematic, around engaging in that kind of work.
We also, within our intercultural competence curriculum, have courses around power and identity and intercultural context, all of which students can take as electives within or as required courses depending on your program. And then we have some courses that are cross-listed in different programs across campus, including things like language development and social justice. And also a new course that’s taught by our colleague, Dr. Thor Sawin, and called Language for Peace Building, which is looking at how to actually go on an immersive learning experience and try to understand what’s happening in a particular region, and then bring that back and process it. So those are some of the courses that come to mind. But the more that our colleagues…we’re all really thinking about how to bake this into our courses. It’s becoming a feature in almost all of our classes in some way, even those that don’t immediately seem obvious. Like Deniz has brought up, and she can speak to this, but the notion of assessment itself being a social justice question. So I don’t know if you’d want to add anything.
Deniz Ortactepe:
Yeah, I will.
Netta Avineri:
Yeah, sure.
Deniz Ortactepe:
Yeah. As Netta mentioned, and I think this is again like going back to your second question about the connection between social justice and language teaching, because we perceive social justice as being very embedded into language teaching, it’s studied, it’s examined, it’s integrated into almost all of the courses. Going back to assessment, for instance, I teach the language assessment course along with other faculty, of course. But in the course that I teach, we talk a lot about democratic assessment, who assessment is benefiting, or these high stakes tests are benefiting. And on the other side of the spectrum, jeopardizing or harming. We talk about classroom-based assessments. We talk about how to empower teachers so that they can design valid and reliable assessment plans that are geared towards their own classroom context. So you can pretty much find connections to social justice issues in almost all of the courses.
I’ll talk about the social justice course that I teach here as an elective. So in this course, you were a part of it as well. We talked a lot about critical pedagogy and we talked about critical themes. So the themes that we discussed, race and ethnicity, environmental justice, gender equality, LGBTQ-inclusive pedagogy and immigration and peace building. The thing that I liked really most about the course is that it was very much personalized. I gave my students the chance to read any short books that they wanted. So I gave them a list of short books to read, but I said you can pick any one of these books, but you can also select a book that’s not on the list.
So some of them read about James Baldwin, some of them read the work of Martin Luther King or Audre Lorde. So it was really rich in that sense, because I think it’s about another feature of MIIS that we give students lots of opportunities to have their own track. So if you’re interested or passionate about racial issues, then you can actually design, for instance, in your research methods course, you can write a paper about Black students and their motivation to learn another language. So it’s very much personalized in that sense and it was reflected in the Language Teaching for Social Justice course as well.
Kalina Swanson:
Great, thanks. So it looks like we have time for just two more questions. So our next question will be, what are some of the interesting projects that students have worked on related to that topic? I know I’ve already discussed the projects that I’ve been involved with, but can you name a few that you guys are involved with, with students? And also, are there any opportunities to engage with the community through MIIS?
Deniz Ortactepe:
Sure. I’ll talk about the project that I’m doing with a student of mine, Kathryn DePietro, and Kate and I started working on this project on migrant student education in Monterey County. And we started working together last year. We worked on the literature review and we actually wrote a grant proposal. And at the end of spring semester last year, again we received the grant from the Monterey County Office of Education, California Department of Education.
And this year we did a needs assessment. We interviewed migrant resource teachers, migrant education staff, and classroom teachers who work highly with migrant students. And starting next week, actually, we are starting our professional development with this group of educational staff, or we call them migrant educators, and we’ll be doing workshops on differentiation, differentiated instruction, action research, and mobile-assisted language learning, culturally responsive and sustaining pedagogies, and multiliteracies. And the reason that we wanted to do action research, we are starting with action research because we want the teachers to go back to their classrooms and do action research, working with the migrant resource teacher and working with us as their supervisors. And we would like to see what kind of an impact that we are making as the teacher trainers and what kind of impact that they can make in their own classrooms. So there are lots of opportunities to engage in such projects and this is only one of them.
Netta Avineri:
Yeah. So in Monterey County and in this region, one of my colleagues at CSU Monterey Bay talks about how it’s a microcosm of all of the best and worst of what’s happening around the globe. So there’s what’s called the lettuce curtain, which is actually this distinction between a lot of the farm working communities that are in what’s called South County and Salinas and all of those in the South County region. And those who are in the other regions of Monterey County, Monterey, Pacific Grove, Carmel that are more affluent. And so really thinking about how complex economic issues are, economic inequality, and our students really are getting all kinds of opportunities for hands-on projects to make sense of what’s happening and to try to intervene. So what Deniz was just describing about understanding what’s happening in the communities, making sense of it through action research methodologies, and then working with faculty and other classmates to try to intervene and make some social change.
So examples that we’ve already mentioned, the practicum courses we offer, there are all kinds of immersive learning experiences, both in our program and at the campus more broadly. There are service learning courses. We have a lot of great partnerships with other institutions in the region and also with other parts of Middlebury, the whole Middlebury ecosystem. So a global reach with programs like social impact core, which I mentioned previously. So students have lots of opportunities to make sense of what’s happening locally in preparation for becoming really socially justice-oriented practitioners.
Kalina Swanson:
Thank you guys. So one of our questions comes from, looks like somebody in high school, who wanted to ask about any tips or advice for a high school student who’s interested in pursuing a career in TESOL, mostly in English as a foreign language. So do you have any tips for them in jump-starting their career?
Netta Avineri:
That’s great that you’re already thinking about it. I have a couple of thoughts. I don’t know if you have anything.
Kalina Swanson:
Go ahead.
Netta Avineri:
Yeah. This is such a cool question. I think the main thing would be to start noticing language that you are using and the languages that your communities are using and become what we call like an ethnographer, like start taking notes and start noticing what’s around you and really making sense of the language that you’re immersed in so that you can think about, how would I want to teach this to other people in other places?
So there’s a project you can do. It’s small, but it’s called linguistic landscapes. So you just start noticing what language is on store signs and at the market and all kinds of things, and just starting to notice patterns about how language is used around you. That would be one tip that I could give you. And to just, when you have opportunities, either in high school or in college or wherever your educational process takes you, if you have opportunities to do a research project on something that you’re passionate about, take advantage of that, as Deniz mentioned, to really pursue your interest as early as possible. So those are the things that come to mind, but I appreciate the question.
Kalina Swanson:
Great. Wonderful. Well, thank you all for participating in today’s webinar. If you have additional questions that we weren’t able to get to today, please email us at info@MIIS.edu. And don’t forget that the next deadline for admission is on February 1. We also have another webinar on February 6 that will discuss how you can turn your language skills into a career. So we’ll post those details in the chat right now. And once again, thank you so much for participating. Bye-bye.
Netta Avineri:
Thank you.
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Global Security
The Rise of the Violent Radical Right
The violent radical right is on the rise globally and its various manifestations are not just talking to one another, but actively engaging together in ideological radicalization, sharing tactics, and even sharing transnational terrorism plots. From the activities of the January 6 and January 8 insurrections in the U.S. and Brazil, to Brexit and the war in Ukraine, the violent far right is building a digital community venerating mass shooters. The same core principles are spurring contemporary actors—rejecting liberalism and embracing traditional values. A central question that begs an answer is whether we can meaningfully counter this rise or if legal systems’ limitations, such as the lack of an American domestic terrorism statute, can overcome decades of focus on the global war on terrorism to adapt to a new threat. Matthew Kriner, senior research scholar at the Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) will share insights and the center’s work developing solutions.
Money Laundering, Fraud, and Financial Crime in a Pandemic Era
Expert Witness), and Professor Moyara Ruehsen explore seven typologies for COVID-related money laundering and fraud, conducting customer due diligence, and detecting red flags.
How AI and Deep Fakes will Amplify Terrorist Propaganda
Kris McGuffie, deputy director of Center on Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC), and Alex Newhouse, digital research lead at CTEC, investigate how Artificial Intelligence (AI) and “deep fakes for text” are being weaponized in the hands of nonstate, nefarious actors.
Student On–Campus Jobs: Nonproliferation and Disarmament Training and Education
Join James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) experts as they share their work supporting professional opportunities for our graduate students. CNS regularly collaborates with students on nonproliferation education and training initiatives, supports graduates with securing prestigious fellowships and internships at international organizations in the field of disarmament and nonproliferation, like the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs in New York and Vienna.
Advancements in North Korea’s Nuclear Program
Careers Fighting Terrorism, WMD Proliferation, and Financial Crime
Is Domestic Terrorism a Greater Threat than Transnational Terrorism?
Professor Jason Blazakis, director of the Center for Terrorism, Extremism, Counterterrorism (CTEC), discusses the current threat landscape and the steps policymakers should take to counter the rise of the right-wing terrorists in the U.S.
Manafort’s Money: Investigating Financial Crimes
From nuclear proliferation to political upheaval to global terrorism; where threats exist, financial backing is making them possible. In this online discussion, Dr. Moyara Ruehsen discusses financial crimes through the lens of Paul Manafort’s money laundering case.
Russia on the Eve of 2018 Elections
Dr. Anna Vassilieva, director of the Monterey Initiative in Russian Studies, speaks about contemporary Russian politics and society through the lens of the presidential elections in spring 2018.
Snooping on North Korea from Monterey
The Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) at the Middlebury Institute has been heavily featured in the news for their groundbreaking work analyzing North Korea’s nuclear program. Jeffrey Lewis, Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the CNS and MIIS faculty member, explains how we use language skills, satellite photographs, and 3D models to monitor North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, all without ever leaving the splendor of the Monterey Peninsula.
U.S.-China Trade War or Tech War?
Professors Wei Liang and Robert Rogowsky, co-chairs of the MA in International Trade and Economic Diplomacy, discuss the ongoing US-China trade war. On the surface, this trade war has been driven by trade imbalance and job loss in the U.S. But it is a battle for tech dominance in disguise.
The World of Financial Crime
Professor Moyara Ruehsen explains the Financial Crime Management specialization (available in all degree programs) and the exciting careers it opens up—from investigative units at private banks to the FBI to compliance at tech companies like AirBnB.
Diverting Hate: A Means to Preventing Online Radicalization Pathways
Learn from a group of Middlebury Institute students that won a national competition with their “Diverting Hate” program aimed to combat hate, bias, and extremism. This team went on to win a grant from the Department of Homeland Security to continue working on their project.
The Future of Cyber Threats: Lessons Learned Leading New York City’s Cyber Command
Geoff Brown, who recently wound down his tenure as both New York City’s chief information security officer and the first-ever head of New York City Cyber Command, shares what he learned on the frontlines of cybersecurity.
Tracking the Far Right: Using Open Source Intelligence to Research and Disrupt Domestic Terrorism
Researchers from the Center for Terrorism, Extremism, and Counterterrorism (CTEC) Alex Newhouse, Erica Barbarossa, Meghan Rahill, and Enrique Nusi share their process for using open-source intelligence methods to map, analyze, and disrupt far-right extremism.
Language Services
Entertainment and Games Localization Career Panel
Alumni from our Translation and Localization Management (TLM) program share insights on how their Middlebury Institute experience has helped their careers in Gaming, Entertainment, and Technology.
Navigating the Growth of AI and Changes to the Language Services Industry
Join our translation, interpretation, and localization management professors and career advisor for a candid conversation about the evolving language services industry and how to navigate the growth of AI.
Japanese Translation & Interpretation Career Panel
Middlebury Institute alumni from the Japanese master’s programs in translation, translation and interpretation, and conference interpretation as they share insights on how their Middlebury Institute experience has helped them in their careers and the wide range of opportunities for our graduates in the language services industry.
The Art and Science of Video Game Localization
Do you want to help launch video games that people around the world love? Join Professor Max Troyer and graduates of our MA in Translation and Localization Management (TLM) who are working in this vibrant industry. We will consider the different pathways to enter the field, including freelance linguist, quality assurance, project management, vendor management, and program management. Here’s your chance to hear from those who have successfully broken into the gaming world.
You Love Languages. So, Now What? Turning Advanced Language Skills into a Fulfilling Career
Multilingual communication is more important than ever before, and speaking multiple languages can give you a leg up on the competition. But good information on how to turn your love of languages into a fulfilling career can be hard to come by. Join Professor Barry Slaughter Olsen for an insider’s view of the language professions and how to figure out if being a language pro is for you.
Devin Lueddeke:
Hello and welcome to our webinar, You Love Languages. So Now What?—Turning advanced language skills into a fulfilling career. My name is Devin Lueddeke, and I will be your host. Thank you for joining us live today; we’re glad to have you. I’d also like to thank those of you who are watching the recording of this webinar later on. Before we get started, I’d like to go over a couple of quick notes regarding technical setup. Please keep your mic muted while the presentation is underway to avoid any background noise. You should also see a chat box and a Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. Please use the Q&A box to ask any questions, and we will do our best to answer them at the end of the presentation.
Without further ado, I’d like to introduce our speaker, Professor Barry Olsen. Professor Olsen is a veteran conference interpreter and technophile with over 25 years of experience in interpreting, training interpreters, and organizing language services. He’s an associate professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, the founder and copresident of InterpretAmerica, and general manager of Multilingual Operations at ZipDX. He is also a member of the International Association of Conference Interpreters. Barry has been interviewed numerous times by national news media, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, and PBS about interpreting and translation. Professor Olsen, the room is yours.
Barry Olsen:
Thank you, Devin. And hello everyone. Thank you for joining us today. I am very grateful for the opportunity to share just some of my own experiences with you today, about how I was able to get into the language professions, and provide you with some information that will help you make good decisions, as you are trying to determine what you would like to do with your career. So I’m going to get my slide presentation started here and we’ll go ahead and begin. So first of all, let me just explain to you what it is I’d like to share with you today. You’re giving me 30 minutes of your time. So let me tell you what I want to offer you today. By the end of this webinar, you’re going to know three things: first, how to avoid one big mistake that I made when I was choosing my career path; two, how artificial intelligence is influencing the language professions.
And I feel like I need to dedicate some time to AI just because of all of the hype that is out there. And if we were to believe what is said in the general media about AI, we would think that, well, the professions of translator and interpreter have no reason to exist anymore. And I’m going to show you that that is not the case and will not be the case the coming years. And then finally, I want to show you some of the new career paths that there are for language professionals. We traditionally think in terms of the dichotomy of translation being written, interpreting being spoken, and that’s it. But in reality, the job descriptions for people working in language are exploding and multiplying with the introduction of technology and with the huge demand for language services in the private sector.
So those are the three areas that we’re going to focus on in the next 20 minutes. We’ll have 10 minutes for questions and please do write your questions. Now, send those in via the Q&A tab so that we can answer as many as we possibly can. So before I tell you about my big mistake that I made over 27, 28 years ago, I’d like to ask you a couple of questions. Devin, would you go ahead and fire up the poll and have the first question. Okay, so what I’d like to know are the languages that you speak. I’ve included the languages that we work with at the Middlebury Institute in translation, interpreting, and localization, and I know that there will probably be other languages as well. So we’ll just take a look at this and see how it all shakes out. Give you a chance to answer those questions.
We’ve got a number of people that are still answering. Once I see the percentages settle, then I’ll ask Devin to end the poll and then share the results with you. Hold on for just another minute or few seconds actually. And I think we’re just about there. We’ve got a good response rate, Devin, of 100 and I’ve got a few more coming in of about 108 of 120 that we have. So let’s go ahead and close that poll and you can show folks and see that actually Chinese and Spanish have come in neck and neck at 37 percent with 40 of the attendees speaking those languages.
We’ve got French, German, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian as well, and others coming in at 26 percent. So of course there are, of course, a lot of languages out there. Thank you for that. That’s really helpful for me to know who I have on the webinar here today. So next, why don’t we go to the next question, Devin, if you would, and this is one to test your knowledge; go ahead and read through those three combinations of languages and decide which one is the correct one for you in official languages.
Give you a chance to answer those questions, that question, and we’ll see how things shake out as you’re trying to figure this out. If you’re unsure, don’t worry about it. Go ahead and take that guess because we don’t think about this. And this will actually have a little bit to do with my big mistake. Give people a little bit more time. We’ll get, okay, we’ve got over 100 percent, few more people are trying to decide—if we had the Jeopardy! music, it would be great, but we don’t, and I’m not going to sing it for you. That’s good. Let’s go ahead and end the poll. And I am very happy to say you can share those results, that the correct answer is the one that 56 percent shows, which is English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Russian, and Chinese. We did have a few people that thought that perhaps German was one of the languages and a few that thought Portuguese was one of the official languages, but that is not the case.
And so with that, you’ve learned something new today. It’s good to know what those official languages are, English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Russian, and Chinese because that can be helpful. Because believe it or not, we have many people apply to the Middlebury Institute with languages other than those five that are, those six, excuse me, that want to be UN interpreters and translators, but they speak German or Portuguese or some other language that isn’t an official UN language. And they actually make it to the master’s program thinking that they can go to the UN. So I will go ahead and wrap up. You can close the polling results there, Devin.
And I’m going to tell you about my big mistake. So back when I was about 22 years old, 22, 23, I knew I loved languages and I knew that whatever I was going to do, I wanted language, especially being able to use my world language, knowledge Spanish in particular, then a little bit of Portuguese. I wanted to use those languages on a daily basis because it’s what made me tick, it’s what made me happy, I loved it, I was curious. And so I went into humanities and I studied Spanish. And I remember on one occasion in my undergrad, I went into the dean’s office where they had some information—mind you, this was pre-Internet days, this was the early ’90s.
I did have an email address, but no one to write to. And technology was still just beginning to go down the road that leads us to where we are today. And so there wasn’t a lot of information out there and my professors taught literature, they taught linguistics. And so, as I would talk about how to use my languages in a profession, they would say, well, you can teach literature or you can teach language and I didn’t want to do those things.
And so I wasn’t satisfied. So I looked and looked, and I remember I found a list of jobs that require foreign language experience. And at the top of that list was United Nations interpreter. And I thought, that’s the one I want. And they listed them by level of difficulty. And that was at the top. And I said, I was always up for a challenge and that was gonna be my job. And so I did a little more research and I did find out that the official languages of the United Nations were English, Spanish, Arabic, French, Russian, and Chinese. And I decided I was going to study Russian and I knew I needed to have three of those languages to be able to work for the UN. And so I started studying Russian. I moved to Russia twice to get my language up to snuff before going into the master’s program.
Later on, towards the end of my undergraduate, I learned that the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey was available, back then the Monterey Institute. And I applied because that’s where I was going to go. And they had the languages that I needed and I was accepted, went through the program. And when I finally met someone who worked at the United Nations that was there to recruit, that was there for my professional exams, they congratulated me on successfully completing my exams. And I said, “I’m really interested in working for the UN.” And then they asked me, “Do you have French?” I said, “No, but I’ve got English, Spanish and Russian.” They said, “Well, we in the English booth hire people that have English, French, and then either Spanish or Russian, or if you have both, that’s great. But without the French, we really don’t staff the booths.”
It was a letdown, I’ve got to admit, and I had to shift, and I decided to go to Washington, D.C., and I tested with the U.S. State Department and began working with the federal agencies there and also with international organizations in Washington, D.C. But had I known back then, what I just shared with you, I may have made different decisions. And I share this with you just because it’s so important for you, as you’re trying to figure out where you want your career path to go, to get good information. And that’s what I’d like to offer up to you today as we move forward. So that was my big mistake. And now you can make sure that you avoid it as well. Let’s go to our third question, Devin, if you’d fire up the poll as I move on to artificial intelligence.
So there’s the poll. This one you’ll have to read through these answers and think. I think artificial intelligence will—just read through those and answer what you think. Now of course, I’m being a little humorous with some of the answers here. I do, I love it. Some that are answering here and thinking about what may happen with artificial intelligence and we’ll let people go ahead and answer these things, and then we’ll go ahead and publish those poll results. Let it get to where we have a percentage of voted to around 90 percent. We’ll wait for just a couple of minutes here, we’re close.
That’s probably good Devin. You can close the poll and share the results with everybody. And again, you guys are savvy folks. I can tell because the vast majority, 85 percent, say that artificial intelligence is changing the way linguists work and expanding the kind of work they do. That is exactly right. We’ll talk about that briefly in just a minute. I do see a few people thought that with this it’s the beginning of Skynet and that whistle will lead to the rise of robot overlords. I hope that’s not the case. A few did think that translators and interpreters will be replaced in the next five years. If that’s the case you may want to rethink what kind of a master’s degree you’re going to go after if you really believe that. But I do not see that happening in my lifetime based on what I have seen with the technology as well.
But thanks for answering that poll. Let’s talk about artificial intelligence for just a moment here. One thing that is in denial, undeniable, I should say, is that technology is permeating every aspect of the language professions. The language professions are not immune. This is happening to all kinds of work. And the days of translators working with books, of course, are over. We know that translation has been using machine translation, translation memory, other types of computer-assisted translation tools for many years; interpreting is not as far along with technology as translation is, but rest assured that if you are looking for a career in the language services, you need to embrace technology because otherwise you won’t be able to work. It’s just that simple. Doesn’t matter if it’s translation, interpreting, or localization. This is the reason that we launched the localization management degree and why we’ve continued to refine and improve and expand this degree over the years.
We’ve had the degree for well over a decade, and it is one of the most cutting edge and the broadest that you will find, I think anywhere in the world, frankly. And in translation and interpreting, we are also including that technology. Now there’s some interesting things to note, many, and you may be saying yes, but machine translation is being used and I’ve seen all of these different articles in the news about how speech-to-speech translation is now a thing, and it is a thing. But these technologies—let’s start with Google Translate just as an example—more than 100 billion words go through Google Translate on a daily basis. It’s a huge amount. I think that’s an equivalent of, if we were to take a Bible, it’s the equivalent of something like 163,000 Bibles translated every day, which is a huge amount.
However, that work that is being translated by Google Translate is not translation that would have ever been done by a professional translator, with maybe a few rare exceptions. So what this has done is, it has expanded access to translation and to language services through automation, but it’s covering things that had never really been covered in the past by professional translators and interpreters. We’re seeing something actually quite similar with speech-to-speech translation. So when you see these technologies, one, get to know them, see how they work, try them out, and you will find out very quickly that they are not going to be replacing the kind of work that human translators do. In fact, I’d like to share a couple of quotes with you. One, this first one is by Arle Lommel. Arle currently works for CSA research, which is an independent research shop based out of Boston, Massachusetts, that focuses on the language services industry.
I encourage you to go to their website and read what they have available for free. It will help educate you about the language services industry. And Arle said this: “Machine translation will displace only those humans who translate like machines.” I agree with that completely. Similarly with interpreters, this is a quote that many of you, if you’re already working in this space, have probably seen many, many times: “Interpreters will not be replaced by technology. They will be replaced by interpreters who use technology.” And we are seeing that in particular with remote interpreting, which is growing, not by leaps and bounds, but is becoming a growing segment of the interpreting space. We are also seeing speech-to-speech translation now being used for conversations. And in some cases, even for conferences; however, it is very much in its infancy and it is limited in what it’s actually capable of doing.
And it is not replacing interpreters, it’s augmenting more than anything else. And so keep that in mind when you’re dealing with AI—AI is a tool. It is not something that is set to reach human parody. In fact, when Microsoft announced that it reached human parody with speech-to-speech translation a year-and-a-half ago, they quickly had to recast the way that they put that because of the blow back that they received, not only from the professional linguists community, but also from those within technology, because it really was not an accurate depiction of what they had done. So moving on now, let’s get into the new language professions ecosystem. AI and technology have affected much of this, and they are creating new jobs for people who want to work as language specialists. And we’ll take a little bit of a closer look at this ecosystem for language professions shortly, but I want to share one other slide with you here.
This is from another independent research shop called Nimdzi based out of Seattle, Washington. Nimdzi is also focusing on the language services industry. And this is a graph that puts our, or an info, what do they call them? Linking of the infographs or the info, heavens I can’t think of the name right off the top of my head, but anyway, it is a graphic that will show you the different verticals within the language services segment. And you can see who some of the leaders are. What I would point out to you is that the traditional place where we have usually thought about language services, which is translation and interpreting at the United Nations, international organizations, foreign ministries, the State Department here in the United States—it makes up less than one fifth of the total market, where people are working, where translators and interpreters and localizers, and the localization managers and engineers are working.
You can see that the private sector in the last 20 years has truly exploded as we have seen globalization take hold and the use of the Internet, gaming, marketing, media localization, subtitling, all of these areas. And so when you’re thinking of the language professions, do not think just about the United Nations and intergovernmental relations, that segment is there. It will always be there. And in fact, one of the things that you should keep in mind, if you’re thinking, are translators and interpreters going to be around, they are, but they’re going to have to get even better because they’re going to be doing the work. We are doing the work that is high stakes and creative, those high stakes meetings, whether it’s an encounter in a hospital, the courts between diplomats, between presidents, those are high stakes and they do not want to leave it up to a cell phone to try and help them communicate. And so these are where the premium services are going to be for humans. And there is an ample opportunity for you also to work hand-in-hand with technology in many of these different verticals.
So looking at this ecosystem for language professionals, as you can see, there are all sorts of, these are all job titles that have been occupied by people who have studied translation and interpreting, okay? And so these are just some of them, and I’m going to switch over now quickly to a website here. And since we had so many people who do speak Spanish on this webinar, I want to encourage you to go to a podcast called En Pantuflas and at the episode—I think the penultimate episode, 97—one of my former students who is now working at the United States State Department and has worked in a number of other areas as an interpreter and translator, [foreign language 00:20:58]. You can go ahead and listen to this wonderful podcast where she talks about her career, why she decided to go back to school and how, where she is now and why continuing education played such an important role. So check that out. I think it’s been dropped into the chat stream so that you can copy that link.
But let’s look at this ecosystem here as we wrap up. A colleague of mine, Winnie Hey, maybe some of you have been on her webinars, has put together a website, which is also going to be made available to you through the chat—thanks for that, Devin—where she’s begun to list the job titles for people who work in translation and interpreting, and she’s down to a total of 53, and she’s constantly adding to this list. But what I want to point out to you is that your career is not just one job. Far too often, we continue to think that, but if I give my career as an example, when I graduated from the Middlebury Institute, I wanted to be an interpreter. I wanted to work in diplomacy and I wanted to be a conference interpreter.
So I moved to D.C., spent the first decade of my career interpreting as much as I possibly could. I loved it. I was traveling. I was with interesting people. I was in interesting meetings and I loved it, but after 10 years I wanted to shift gears. And so I decided to go back and teach, which has also been one of my loves. I come from a long line of teachers in my family. And so I’ve been doing that now for the last decade, but also I’ve adjusted. I sit on a couple of advisory boards for language technology companies. I also provide consulting services to people who are looking into getting into the language services space from a technology angle. That’s where my focus has been while I still continue to interpret and teach. And so that’s been my career path.
So although you may want to translate for a long time, there may come a time when you want to shift and do something else—just to take as an example here, if we look at the director of localization in each one of these job descriptions, you’ll be able to see what the description is, what the skills requirements are. And then Winnie’s provided a link to a number of people who are working in these job positions. Teresa Marshall is someone who was at the Institute when I was many years ago. She is now the vice president of Globalization and Localization Salesforce. And so, as you think about what you would like to do, I encourage you to go through this list and look at how these people, where they’re working, what they’re doing. And it will give you an idea of where you should place your emphasis and the kinds of opportunities that can come to you if you get the appropriate training and education.
So our time is quickly drawing to a close, and there are so many other things that I could share with you. I went through a list of just some of my friends and recent graduates and where some of them are working. And they’re working at places like the World Bank, working for the United States Census Bureau, working for companies. I mean, I think, in fact, I think she’s actually even on here if we look at business development manager. One of my recent grads, Gabriela Seabeck, is interpreting, but she’s also working in business development. And this is kind of an interesting thing to think about because traditionally language services, since they were in the public sector, you know, decades ago, it was more about procurement. It was more about these job positions and titles. And as the private sector has needed more and more language services, what has happened is that now we are seeing Salesforce is going out and selling translation and selling interpretation in order to show the value added in the private sector.
And so the private sector has grown very rapidly and it is a significant part of the ecosystem, whereas 30 years ago, that wasn’t as much the case, okay? So don’t just think public sector, also think private sector as you’re looking at these different jobs. So as I wrap up, I want to share a quick quote from Robert Frost. And that is, and I know you’ve probably all heard of this, and this is such an appropriate thing to mention because Robert Frost wrote most of his poetry in Middlebury, in Vermont, and I’ve actually had the opportunity to walk through the woods where he lived and everything. It’s quite interesting. But I think that this quote has much to do with how most linguists, most translators, interpreters, localizers get into what we do because it is the road less traveled.
And we do it because we have a passion for it, we love it. And we find a way to have the career that we want rather than letting ourselves be put into a mold. So I just would end with this: “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.” Definitely been the case for me, and as you are continuing to do your research to decide on what your career path is going to be, I wish you the very best of luck. And if it leads you to the Middlebury Institute, I look forward to seeing you on campus. So with that, I will go ahead and open it up for questions at this time. And Devin, I’ll turn it back over to you.
Devin Lueddeke:
Alright, Barry, thank you so much. Great presentation. And we do have a number of questions. We have some colleagues that have been trying to answer a few of those questions via chat. But I’ll bring some of them to the forefront because I think they’re good. So the first question that came through is one that is from someone who’s very passionate about languages and would love to be the best provider that they can be for their family. What are some of the most lucrative career paths that they can take in this industry?
Barry Olsen:
That’s an awesome question and one that I think, frankly, is really important, and it’s one that was very important to me as well because I’m the main provider for my family. So what I would say in terms of stability and positions, most of those are going to be found in the localization area at this time. There are a lot of opportunities in localization for that because they’re looking for people to join teams, to be part of a company. And so we have so many graduates that end up with a lot of their companies in Silicon Valley. However, I will say that conference interpreting, if you have the right language combination and you’re willing to relocate to the places where the work is, can also be very lucrative. I would say both of those areas, you can make six figures.
For conference interpreting, it takes time to build up, to have the clientele to be able to do that, but it is very feasible and something that many colleagues are doing. And so it is in those areas, if you’re looking to be a freelance translator, getting started those first couple of years can be a challenge, same thing with interpreting, but getting past that and getting your clientele established, provides you with a good income. And one of the other things that it does is it provides you with a very flexible schedule, which is one of the things that I’ve become quite accustomed to, and that I enjoy immensely.
Devin Lueddeke:
Great. And Barry, there’s been a couple of questions asking for a little bit more clarification about localization and localization as it compares to interpretation or translation. Could you just define localization a little bit?
Barry Olsen:
Yes, so localization—what I like to do is say translation is written, interpreting is spoken, localization is language knowledge plus technology, translation plus technology. But it’s so much more than that because if you think about what needs to be localized, we’re talking about any kind of media. In translation, we tend to think, oh, we’re talking about the written word, then it’s a book, or it’s a document and that really is not that much the case anymore. Obviously there are books that are still translated, but most media is electronic in nature and it can be mixed media, it may be printed, it may be spoken. There may be some titles involved, there may be adaptation of a script. You have people that are working in video game localization on a regular basis that are dealing with scripts, that may be doing voiceover. And they have to deal with all of the issues of the software localization as well, for say, medical devices and for websites.
And so for localization, it’s really pretty technology heavy. Translators and interpreters, although they have to know a lot about the technologies that are needed to deliver their services, the localizers are really diving into, for example, the code that is needed for a website and making sure that the code is going to be adaptable as well as we’re starting to see with algorithms, even where algorithms are being employed. Sometimes an algorithm, the way it’s written, isn’t appropriate for use with certain languages. And so they have to rework algorithms. And so if you have an interest in math as well, and you’ve got that background, you can combine that also with language in localization. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of a better idea.
Devin Lueddeke:
That’s great. And related to localization, maybe language and seed jobs in general, are there particular cities? There’s a comment that the West Coast seems to contain most of the localization jobs. Are they going to emerge elsewhere as well? Or what do you see about geographical trends?
Barry Olsen:
Yes, not only are they going to emerge but they already exist. So, for example, within the United States, you’re going to see localization work, obviously in Silicon Valley, San Jose, which is the Mecca, but also you have Austin, Texas. You have the Wasatch Front in Utah, Salt Lake and all along there, you have a lot of the companies that were established in San Jose that have actually moved a lot of their operations to the Wasatch Front because of the knowledge expertise, the language expertise, and the technology expertise that they have there.
You’ll also find a hub for localization in Ireland of all places, particularly in Dublin, is another city where you would look. You’ll also see jobs in Germany; Amsterdam is becoming more and more of a place where you’re going to see these kinds of jobs with companies settling there and needing localization services for their operations in the EMEA area, or Europe in the Middle East and Africa. Obviously there’s a lot of work in China as well. And I’m not as familiar with Asia to be able to say what cities exactly, but those are some of the areas and, yes, it’s going to continue to expand. And I would also say that there are people who have successful localization careers that are living, they’re working remotely most of the time.
Devin Lueddeke:
Excellent, thank you. Hopefully you have time for a few more. I’d like to thank the audience for so many questions. We’ve got some that I’m just, I’m sure we won’t get to, but we’ll let you email us later on, but we do have a couple questions about certifications. One question is what is the best way to certify language skills for less popular languages? And then if you can add on any recommendations regarding certification one is to avoid or to focus on.
Barry Olsen:
Rather than saying less popular languages, I would probably just say languages that don’t have as many speakers because you know, all languages are popular for the people that speak them, first off. But one thing for sure is that there are all sorts of different names that get used. They talk about languages of lesser diffusion. There are different acronyms that come and go, but the challenge remains, right? How are you going to certify someone’s competency in a language and then their competency to translate or interpret that language when the demand for the language can be sporadic—it’s really needed when it’s needed, but when it’s not needed, well, you know, these speakers and translators, interpreters, may have to do other things. One of the best ways is to check, to see if the government of a country where that language is spoken has some kind of test that will validate the language. Competency of someone who says they speak it and write in that language, that can be one of the good ways to go about it.
In terms of translation or interpretation skills, you’ll find that the American Translators Association does have a pretty good list of languages that they do certify, but there are those languages that are not spoken as much, but they tend to be spoken in refugee communities. And it’s hard to get a certification for those. You could also look at the certification tests that are available at the state level in the United States for the courts. And you can look at the consortium and see what languages that they actually offer. California—I probably may be off base here—but I believe California offers the most languages that can be certified. And you also have the medical certifications that exist. There are two tests and they have different languages available, but they are limited.
There are some certifications for interpreting knowledge and ability that don’t focus on the specific language combination that can help to legitimize someone who speaks a language and has gotten training to be able to interpret it. And the other possibility that exists, but it tends to be quite cumbersome, I’m the first to recognize this, is one of peer sponsorship. And that is what the International Association of Conference Interpreters uses for conference interpreters. You have to get people to vouch for your ability that have, they have the same language combination as you, and there is a possibility for requesting a waiver if there are no people with your language combination in your region or in the association to be able to introduce that language. But as I said, it can be quite cumbersome and it is not perfect, but it is an avenue to be able to get that certification.
Devin Lueddeke:
Excellent. Here’s a question, part of translating and interpreting is having a wide vocabulary and specific language. How do you stay on top of staying up to date with pertinent information in different languages?
Barry Olsen:
Read, read, read, read, read, and read some more as well as listen. You now have so many things available because of the Internet. When I started as a student at the Middlebury Institute, back in the mid-’90s, mid to late ’90s, the Internet was just new. We didn’t have video, we didn’t have audio available. Just being able to see the headlines, the day they were published online from say Spain or from Moscow was unheard of. And it was amazing. So we were now able to read things that were up to date, but being able to do that is the key way that you’re going to be able to maintain your knowledge about what’s going on. And if you don’t, your knowledge will ossify without a doubt.
I mean, trade is one example where years ago we were always talking about NAFTA and now there is a successor agreement to NAFTA. And you have to be up on the acronyms. You have to know all of those things so that you can be in the know because you are expected to know those things when you go into meetings. So make use of the media that is available. I mean, I’m able to watch the news, from Mexico and from Russia on a daily basis from my computer today, 30 minutes a day. If you can carve that out, even if it’s 15, will make a difference.
Devin Lueddeke:
Excellent, thank you. And there’s been another pattern emerging, a few questions about it looks like some folks are, even in the stage where they’re deciding which languages to add to their repertoire. Are there particular languages that you see more job opportunities?
Barry Olsen:
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. That is an excellent, excellent question. And then it gets to my own experience back when I was in my undergrad and I was choosing, right? I think the first thing to note is when you’re early enough in your undergrad, let’s say you’re a sophomore, you’ve got that time to choose a language and really focus on it. If you already have, let’s say a strong knowledge of French, right, and you’re fluent in French. You’ve had time to live abroad, you did some high school stuff, and you think, I need to add another language. Well, in all reality, if you’re looking to be a conference interpreter, I would say your best bet is to add Spanish because that’s a workhorse combination where there is a fair amount of work, right? There’s a lot of work to do that.
Russian could be a possibility as well, as you’ve learned, right? What normally happens is you have the UN languages and I would say in the United States and in the Western hemisphere, you could also add Portuguese to the list because Portuguese is very much in demand. Particularly if you’re interested in working with companies from Latin America, being able to say I have Spanish and Portuguese and English, it’s like, okay, we’ve got everything covered. And if you can say, I’ve got French as well. So if anything comes up from Haiti or from Quebec, then that’s also helpful. So that is like a workhorse combination, English, Spanish, French, Portuguese.
However, if you’re looking at relocating and being in a European Union, then the workhorse language is there. Even with Brexit, English continues to be a workhorse language. English, French, German, are really the big ones. And then it’s usually Spanish, Portuguese, Italian. And then you have the Eastern European languages and Russian becomes more of an interest because of the proximity and the interaction with Russia. So those tend to be the stronger languages. For Asia, it is Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, to a certain extent Indonesian, but really it’s Korean, Japanese, and Chinese that are the workhorses of Asia.
Devin Lueddeke:
Great.
Barry Olsen:
Let me quickly say something about Arabic as well.
Devin Lueddeke:
Sure.
Barry Olsen:
And this is an important thing for you guys to know, at the United Nations, the French, English, Spanish and Russian booths are what are known as pure booths. I don’t know that pure is the best word, but there you need to be one directional. They work from many languages into that one language; the Chinese and the Arabic booths are bilingual, they’re bi-directional. And normally the Arabic booth is expected to work in English, from Arabic, and then back from Arabic or from English into Arabic, and then Arabic and it’s, you get the idea, same thing with Chinese. And so there are, depending on the language combination, there can be different expectations.
Devin Lueddeke:
Excellent. Thanks for that. Um, so the other question that has come up, and this might be the last one that we have time for, but how does one go about developing a specialty when you spend your time focusing on language skills? So for science, politics, healthcare, et cetera.
Barry Olsen:
That’s another excellent question. I was one of those people that was devoured by the humanities monster. I loved my classes. I learned a lot, I got very good at the languages, but it does, unfortunately, within the humanities, they don’t really focus on the kind of terminology and vocabulary and subject matter expertise that you’re going to use as a professional linguist—a lot about medieval literature and things like that that you have to study. And that gets me to a whole other issue that I have with the humanities programs in general—they’re important, those things matter, but I do think that there needs to be a practical component in language learning. That’s my personal opinion, how you go about getting that expertise. A lot of linguists just fall into it; since I knew that I wanted to focus on diplomacy and politics, I started caring about current events, a great deal, macroeconomics. I actually took a macroeconomics class to make sure that I understood it.
I spent time living in Latin America and taking courses specifically about statistics, macroeconomics, because I wanted to have that knowledge as well, as well as politics and history. So that’s how I did it. But there are different pathways to this. So let’s say for example, you are a student that is already bilingual and very much so, and well-educated in your two languages. You may get an undergraduate degree in engineering and then decide, I want to be a translator so I’m going to get trained as a translator at the MA level, and then I’m going to work and I’m going to focus on a specific area of engineering. What I would just say is there are actually many pathways to becoming a specialist, and it really depends on an individual’s own personality and their own history as to how to go about doing it.
Devin Lueddeke:
And Barry, so last question, any last words of advice for someone who might be considering attending one of the degree programs at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies?
Barry Olsen:
Yes. So depending on where you are in your preparation, one of the areas where we see the greatest lack is time in-country, living and working in the language that you have acquired. We set a minimum of six months, right, where you’re really, really focused. If you were still an undergrad and you’ve got a few years to go, find a way for you to spend a junior year or a semester abroad where you are doing nothing but living and working in that language. Don’t go and hang out with all the experts at the Irish pub and speak English all the time. You need to get in there. You need to use the language every day, read, interact, learn, see what it’s like to pay an electric bill in the country.
I mean, those are the kinds of things that are going to help fill in the cultural knowledge that we often see, that is a little bit like Swiss cheese when students arrive, you know they’re fluent, they can express what they want to say, but they don’t know a lot about the culture. And that really comes from living in-country. And so if you can take that time to live in-country before you begin the program, it will just help you immensely. So six months is the minimum, but a year would be a heck of a lot better.
Devin Lueddeke:
All right. Thank you so much, Professor Olsen, and thank you everyone for joining us today. If you joined late or would like to watch this again, we’ll actually be sending out the recording to everyone who registered at some point next week. I’d also like to remind those of you interested in our degree programs about a preview day event that we’ll be hosting on April 4, so you can look for an invitation about that. And also there will be another webinar about how artificial intelligence and deepfakes may amplify extremist propaganda.
So a bit of a different topic related to AI, and that’s on February 20 at 12:00 Noon Pacific Time. If you have a question that we didn’t have time to answer, very sorry about that. There were so many questions that came through and very good ones. Please email us at info@miis.edu—I put that into the chat as well. And finally, if you’d like to stay connected with Professor Olsen, not only can you find his contact details on our website, but you can also follow him on Twitter at Professor Olsen. Thank you once again for participating; we really appreciate your time.
Japanese Translation and Interpretation Career Panel: Careers in Gaming, Entertainment, and Technology
Middlebury Institute alumni from our Japanese translation and interpretation master’s programs as they share insights on how their Middlebury Institute experience has helped their careers in Gaming, Entertainment, and Technology.
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Interpreter’s Gold: Behind the Scenes at the Tokyo Olympics
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Sustainability
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The Policy and Politics of the Green New Deal
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Ocean Climate Action Plan: Influencing President Biden’s Build Back Better Campaign
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Conflict Transformation Info Session for Prospective Students
Dr. Netta Avineri and a panel of current fellows discuss the professional development, interdisciplinary engagement, research projects, and scholarship benefits of the Conflict Transformation Fellowship.
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Making the Most of Internships
Your internship can and should align with your personal and professional interests, leveraging many of the skills you have developed and will develop during your time at the Middlebury Institute—preparing you for future success. From working in refugee support to human rights and social change, current Middlebury Institute students and recent graduates discuss how they found their internships and incorporated them into their graduate school experience.
Program Info Sessions
Global Governance and Policy: Program Information Session
Our new MA in Global Governance and Policy will prepare you to address challenges like economic development, human rights, peace and security, sustainability, and international trade. Join program chair, Scott Pulizzi, and career advisor, Scott Webb, as they guide you through the curriculum, experiential learning opportunities, and transformative career outcomes for this new program
