Please join us in welcoming Diana Zhang, one of our new Translation Interns!
Diana Zhang, coming from Beijing, China, is in her fourth year at the University of Iowa double majoring in English and Creative Writing and Translation. She works with Korean and is currently self-studying Cantonese.
Diana enjoys learning foreign languages. Being a native speaker of Mandarin, she started learning English while attending an elementary international school. In high school her interest in K-pop and K-dramas made her study Korean first by herself on Duolingo, and then for three semesters at the University of Iowa. “Me and my friends thought it’s cool to study Korean so that one day we’d go to South Korea. We’ll be able to talk to the idols,” she said. As her mom speaks Cantonese and her family enjoys Hong Kongese movies, she also started learning Cantonese.
Diana got interested in translation after her friends told her that it is hard to find good translations for the Chinese fanfiction they like. “I thought it would be nice to translate for them, so I chose the translation major,” she said. Her path in writing was influenced by her mom and one of her aunts who are writers in Taiwan.
Diana’s English was not always so good. She remembers a story from her first time visiting the United States when she attended summer school as a young teenager. One day, she went to McDonald’s with her friends who were also from China. The cashier had asked them if they wanted to dine in or take it to go. Diana thought that the cashier meant that they had to eat it there, or else they had to go. She felt upset that the person was rude to them. “We were super scared, and we had to eat there, even if we did not want to. We missed one of our afternoon classes because of eating there,” she said.
Diana is going to use her writing and language skills as a communication specialist in the future and will start graduate school in August. She will be pursuing a Master’s Degree in Communication Management at the University of Southern California.
Funnily enough, her childhood dream job was on the opposite side of the spectrum, where there was no communication involved. “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a forensic pathologist because I was really introverted and didn’t want to deal with people.” Her introversion was connected to the fact that China was quarantining because of an epidemic of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) until she was 3 years old. Because of the situation, she did not interact with people and was very nervous when strangers approached and wanted to talk to her.
However, the love for the dark and mysterious did not leave Diana. For her translation capstone project, she is working on an English translation of a Korean dark fairy tale collection that was part of a play. “These fairy tales are dark, but I think they teach you a lot of life lessons,” she said.
Diana applied for this position after talking with her translation advisor. The Bachelor of Arts in Translation coursework requirements include Outreach and Engagement in the form of an internship or study abroad. Diana’s advisor recommended Global Ties Iowa, where her classmate Jason Ly had an internship the semester before.
As a Translation Intern, Diana will be researching critical languages needed for visiting international leaders and target languages for community engagement in eastern Iowa. She will also be recruiting language users of identified languages and translating communications materials and media. She is going to help with Mandarin, Cantonese, and Korean translations.
In her spare time, she likes trying new things. She currently enjoys playing video games with her boyfriend and having boba tea whenever possible. She is motivated by her parents and her boyfriend. She recalls that her dad’s words are always wise and inspiring. Once he said to her, “You don’t have to be good at everything, but you have to at least have an expertise in something,” which she found very motivational. She hopes to travel a lot in the future, especially to Switzerland which is her favorite European country.
We are excited to have Diana on the team as a new Translation Intern! Welcome to the team!