Do you know when someone has had a passion since their childhood? I had several dream jobs when I was little, but as long as I remember, my biggest dream has always been to learn many languages. And the only reason why I say “many” is because I soon realized that I couldn’t learn them all.

After attending High School specialised in foreign languages, I studied for my BA Degree in Linguistic Mediation and I discussed my dissertation in April 2017. It was about a Colombian social dialect called “Parlache” used by low-classes speakers in Medellín. I also gained experience as a translator whilst working for the website www.welcome-to-sardinia. I was also given the opportunity to practice in this field as a freelance by translating menus for several restaurants in the touristic area of Sardinia, Italy, to satisfy my eagerness for getting involved with languages, at any time.

Some time ago, I moved to Barcelona in order to improve my knowledge of Spanish and in a few years, I successfully completed a course in Proofreading and Style in Spanish and I reached the C2 Level DELE Certification.

Barcelona really helped me to achieve my dreams. Here, I started working as a translator specialised in Medicine for an Italian acupuncture doctor who teaches Neuromodulation in Spain. I translate course material and I also work as consecutive interpreter during the courses, from Italian to Spanish.

But the turning point of my career was when I started to study Audiovisual Translation and I’m now about to get my Master’s Degree in Audiovisual Translation: localization, subtitling and dubbing from ISTRAD.

At the moment, I’m working as a freelance subtitler for a few Netflix vendors. I also used to work as subtitler for a local Italian TV channel in the past. I have just started working as freelance videogames and software tester. All of a sudden I’ve realized I am living my lifetime dream.

For me, translating is a very unique and beautiful technique that let you enter new worlds: all the cultures that could be really close to ours but are unreachable because of the language barrier. I love my job and that’s the best business card you can provide.

JANA BALLETTE, AUDIOVISUAL TRANSLATOR

jana.ballette@yahoo.it

My name is Mohamed Mehana, I am an Egyptian freelance subtitler. I have been working in the subtitling industry as a professional for one year now. I have a degree in civil engineering and worked as a civil engineer for several months, but I have always had a passion for linguistics and subtitling, so I studied media translation at the American University in Cairo, then I worked as a volunteer on many platforms that accept beginner volunteers for nearly a year where I gained valuable experiences that helped me to start working as a professional subtitler.

I know that I still have many things to learn and many goals to achieve, and I really hope to have a long and prosperous career in the subtitling industry.