Daphne: My Winter Working in the Internship Translation Team

Daphne is an Ashinaga Winter 2020 Translation Intern. She attends Macalester College and double majors in Linguistics and Japanese. Her majors in college sparked her interest in translation, and she saw an opportunity to try translating at Ashinaga as an intermediary step before beginning her professional translation career. Her plans for the internship were to accumulate translation experience in a professional setting. In her free time, she enjoys taking walks in nature, drawing, and listening to music. This is her first time in Japan.

Daphne applied to Ashinaga because she saw a unique opportunity to fuse her interest in Japanese language and translation with a worthy social cause. So far, she has begun to understand the internal structure of a large NGO, the pros and cons of living in Tokyo, and is becoming increasingly aware of her workplace preferences. She discovered that her productivity is largely linked to sunlight and space, well-suited to open office environments like that of the Ashinaga Tokyo HQ. Daphne’s experience at Ashinaga has really encouraged her to pursue a profession that would allow for opportunities to forge direct, face-to-face connections with people.

The translation team in particular has the privilege of working on a diverse array of projects. Out of these, translating materials for the Ashinaga fundraising team is one of the most rewarding internship tasks for Daphne thus far. Through the translation of documents for the upcoming 100th student bokin, she is able to familiarize herself with Japanese that she does not use on a regular basis while also bettering her understanding of the fundamental framework of Ashinaga’s fundraising efforts.

“It feels good to do work that helps Ashinaga employees of multiple language backgrounds understand and participate in the organization’s mission to their full ability.”

In the long term, this opportunity has allowed Daphne to build her resume, gauge her interest in living in Japan, and judge the viability of pursuing translation as a future profession. After she completes her internship, Daphne plans to continue her undergraduate education via a semester-long study abroad program at Sophia University in Tokyo.

If you are interested in internship opportunities at Ashinaga, or you know someone who is, visit our “Intern With Us” page.