A career path to localization
In June 2021, I was leading the Chinese Dubbing Team at Iyuno-SDI, a front-runner media localization provider, when we suddenly received a huge amount of dubbing orders from Disney+. The new projects with seemingly unreasonable deadlines would increase our team’s workload four to five times. I thought that it was impossible for us to complete them in time. At this crucial moment, my regional director helped me negotiate with the client and reorganize the deadline for some less urgent projects, lessening our burden significantly. Thanks to her support, I grew more confident and led my team through this challenging three-month period by redistributing a portion of the projects to external vendors and maintaining high morale with well-negotiated payments distributed to our in-house employers.
As rewarding as it was, my experience with the Disney+ projects led me to rethink my career path. As an aspiring professional who has worked in the localization industry for more than five years, I found it difficult to move up the career ladder due to a lack of systematic knowledge and an advanced degree. I hope to improve my negotiation skills and problem-solving techniques and become someone who faces challenges without fretting. This goal has been a key driver for me to apply for the Master of Arts in Translation and Localization Management (TLM) degree from Middlebury Institute of International Studies (MIIS).
Luckily, I was admitted. Now, here I am, located in a beautiful town on a completely strange continent, struggling in the second week of the new semester, writing this post, thinking about the TLM happy hour party I attended last night and imagining what my life will be like in the future.
Of course I would like to continue working in the localization industry. With my experience managing both domestic and international projects as well as leading dubbing teams, I believe the best next move is to join a client-side company. I am also open to different industries that require localization services, such as software or gaming. At the end of the day, all I wanted to achieve is to provide a better, localized experience to global audiences and users.
