A look at our Senior Community: Meet Ahmed, Mathieu and Jose

Senior Editors are a vital part of our community and this is what you can call an #appreciationpost.

You may have noticed that over this first quarter of 2022 we have been even more concentrated on finding ways to feature our Senior community. Well, for starters, we couldn’t go without highlighting that this year our seniors worked on twice as many revisions compared to the same period in 2021. While FAQ jobs are heating up and with new content coming our way when the integration with Lingo24 is complete, last March we held the first event for the group, the so-called Senior Masterclass. I can say it was greatly rewarding to see our members asking questions and sharing their thoughts with us! 💙

This time I take up this space to present to you three members of our Senior community who make our group so diverse and unique: Ahmed, Matthieu and Jose. Senior Editors are a vital part of our community and this is what you can call an #appreciationpost.

Old timer, new member: meet Ahmed

I was pleasantly surprised when going through my Inbox and noticed that one of the seniors writing to me was a long-time collaborator of Lingo24. Ahmed Khedr, native Arabic speaker was born in Kufa, Iraq, and raised in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. “I have always been interested in language, literature, and writing. I studied English language and literature at Mansoura University, Egypt. After 11 years in the translation and localization industry, I still find translation a fun thing to do,” Ahmed tells me. When I questioned what is the most rewarding thing in working with reviews, Ahmed says it’s “the chance to refine and improve the quality of both machine and human translations to provide a top-notch final output.”

Including Ahmed, last month we started integrating Lingo24 suppliers (that’s the equivalent of editors). The Unbabel family gives a big warm welcome to Ahmed and all the Lingoists out there!

Between translations and mountains: meet Mathieu

Our next Senior in the spotlight defines himself as a savvy reader. “I have my preferred dictionaries (one general, one scientific) when I have a doubt or I don’t know a word”. Mathieu was born in Paris, studied engineering and loves hiking and skiing in the mountains. This passion was actually why Mathieu and his girlfriend first got together. “I accidentally met my partner online… She was living in Italy and we got connected discussing possible hiking in the Alps.”

Mathieu joined Unbabel almost a year ago, after applying through a Facebook ad. “I was already working as a freelancer for various platforms in the AI industry, and decided to give it a try.” I asked Mathieu if he has any kind of favorite content in reviews. “I had a number of reviews for famous plastic brick toys, and it was quite fun.” Bearing in mind that Mathieu studied engineering, I wonder if this could be related 🤔

Any tips to share with fellow Senior Editors (and Seniors to be)? “I have a look at the customer website, in case the text to be edited is very specific. Apart from understanding the customer context, it also enables me to understand some precise words (not always in the glossary). Finally, to improve my skills, I would say that I read a lot, and I am always curious to know how to say a word in another language. As I’m French and my partner is living in Italy and teaching English online, you can imagine this happens several times a day.”

Committing to self-improvement: meet Jose

The e-interactions I had with Jose gave me the impression that he is the type of person who likes to improve himself in everything he does to always deliver the best possible version. “I’m so excited (to be in the blog) that I went to get a haircut earlier today so I could send you guys a nice photo.”

Jose was raised in Anaco, a town in Venezuela moved by the Oil and Gas industry. He attended a school for children whose parents worked in the country’s then larger Oil company where he quickly developed interest in the English language and learned to speak it overtime. “That wouldn’t be possible without the help of my father, who taught me everything I needed to kick off,” he remembers fondly.

Becoming a Senior to Jose felt like he was being rewarded for committing to improving. “It’s a responsibility I gladly took with humility and determination, as to why I’m always trying to improve while remembering to not be so hard on myself.” For Jose, the path to build universal understanding is all about being connected. “It’s an ongoing process of learning to collaborate with others, but also gaining confidence in our own actions and judgment.”

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New FAQ alert 🚨

As mentioned during the Senior Masterclass, the new FAQ What does a senior editor do? is published and you can now check it in our Help Center!

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Did you enjoy getting to know our Senior Editors? Share your own story or send a shout out in the comments!