Alumna Spotlight: Natalie Kammerer

Photo Credit: Alumni Spotlight: Natalie Kammerer
February 6, 2023

Major:  French literature
Graduation Year: 2016 (undergraduate) and 2019 (graduate)

Who is your employer, and where are they located? 
MosaLingua – they’re based in France, but I work remotely. It’s a small French-owned language-learning company (think Duolingo) that offers app-based content as well as additional courses and lessons to target oral comprehension and speaking in nine different languages.

What is your job title and what kind of work does it involve?
English Content Translator. Because of our team’s international nature, I work to localize all kinds of content produced by my colleagues who are non-native English speakers, ranging from blog posts and web pages to video scripts, app content, and marketing presentations.

What sparked your interest in your major?
I’ve always had a strong interest in travel and connecting with people, so language was a natural choice for me.

What do you see as the value of your major or CAS degree?
I certainly can’t place a concrete value on the linguistic skills, perspectives, or personal relationships that I gained during my time at UNL, but I do attribute my ability to stand out in the job market to these skills and the unique experiences that the French MA program offered me.

Were there any other people, activities, or events from your time at UNL that helped you get to where you are now?
Absolutely. Connections that I made with faculty and classmates at UNL have continued to bring interesting people and projects my way since graduating. Also, I can point to two unique aspects of the French MA program that really defined my experience in the program. Teaching my own courses as an MA student in the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures (rather than assisting a professor) and participating in a year-long teaching abroad program at the Université de Paris-Est provided excellent opportunities for personal and professional growth. Though I’m no longer standing in front of a classroom every day, those experiences continue to inform my work.

Tell us about the path you took to get to where you are today in your career and how you applied your education in your major:
Since graduation, I’ve done a lot of freelance translation work, which helped me get exposure to many different kinds of projects and people in order to find what was most interesting and rewarding to me. After a while, I knew I wanted to find a way to be part of a larger, more long-range project where I could really see the effects of my work. My familiarity with translation work, paired with my experience teaching introductory French courses as a graduate student made me a strong candidate for my current position translating educational materials.

What are your future professional goals?
My first introduction to translation – and still my main passion – is literary translation, and my biggest professional goal is to publish a novel in translation.