Reskill, Upskill, Newskill: Strategising for (Re)employment

 

The unpredictable state of the economy and the Covid-19 pandemic have severely impacted the employment landscape in the country and many have been affected, including yours truly.

When it was confirmed that my previous employer (which I was attached to for some 20-odd years) was closing the entire unit that I was serving last July, the first thing that came to my mind was how do I strategise to be re-employed. 

Age wasn't on my side and seniority did not seem to matter. Neither do I have outstanding cooking nor baking skills to sell food online  that so many has resorted to once retrenched.

But I love words and writing and apart from my experience in journalism, I did dabble in subtitling for TV (food shows, XFiles in the 90s, movies) as well as some freelance translation work for children's books once. So I thought why not - why not brush it up and pick it up again.  

So I decided to look up translation courses at the Malaysian Institute of Translation & Books - otherwise known as Institut Terjemahan Bahasa & Buku Malaysia / ITBM - that accorded certification in translation among others.   

Contents of the General Translation Course offered by ITBM.

I chose the General Translation Course (Intensive) which spanned over two weeks in the month of August 2020 from 9am to 5pm every weekday. It covered the theories and fundamentals of translation from English to Malay and vice versa, and delved  into the translation of general texts as well as science social, mass communications, creative literature, science and technology, and legal texts. 

Taught by experts in each domain, we had on-site and take home assignments during the course. At the end of it all was a full-day exam which saw participants translating six short texts from each category from morning till late afternoon. 

Lempeng, Chicken Curry and Teh Tarik: one of the delightful tea time snacks

While the learning was more intense than I anticipated, the hard work was accompanied by some seriously delicious food. Nobody can fault ITBM for not providing a mean menu four times a day - breakfast, morning coffee (though it could be teh tarik), lunch and tea.

I enjoyed the camaraderie among the participants during the course which certainly made it enjoyable: there was a lecturer looking to upskill herself, several employees wanting to upgrade their knowledge for better prospects in their companies, undergraduate students who wanted to gather as much skillsets as they could, an engineer who wanted to switch career to be a more hands-on mom, and also an excolleague - Miss Z.  There were group work and individual work and everyone was so full of enthusiasm. Nobody was a slacker, I tell you...

Group picture with fellow participants and one of the instructors.

I did regain employment after a month's rest. Certainly the knowledge and skills gained during the ITBM course can add value to my current job. I have recently received the certificate and am duly certified as a translator, and am keen  to see where this will take me.

Like they say there's always a silver lining in every cloud. I believe every situation holds the possibility of something positive.