By Natalia G. Quintas, Director of People & Culture at Avantpage. Women in Localization Volunteer.
In April I spoke at Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires, at an event we organized with Women in Localization Argentina. The room was full of translation students about to graduate. Before I walked in, I sent them a short survey to understand what was on their minds. Sixty-three people responded. What I got back wasn’t what I expected. It was honest, and it stayed with me.
I opened with that question because I could feel it in the room before anyone asked. The survey confirmed it: 41.3% of students named landing their first job as their biggest concern. Economic stability understandably emerged as a key concern in Latin America students, along with limited experience and a general sense of not knowing where to aim.
One answer made me laugh out loud: “I want to be a millionaire.” I get it. When social media presents careers as either overnight success stories or cautionary tales, it’s hard to know what’s actually realistic.
So I was straight with them: yes, you can make a living in this industry. But not just by being good at languages. You get paid for solving problems. For understanding what you do better than others, who needs that, and why it matters. The students who seemed to take that in were the ones who’d been thinking of themselves as translators. Watching them reframe it in real time was probably the best part of the morning.
Only 20.6% of students said they had a clear sense of their career path. Most said “somewhat clear.” A meaningful number said they had no idea.
This isn’t a lack of motivation because the room was full of it. It’s the gap between learning to translate and learning how to build a career. Those are two different skills, and most programs only teach one of them.
The question that kept appearing in the open responses was some version of “where do I even start?” These students were ready to move, but they didn’t have a map yet.
I kept coming back to the basics. A focused CV. A portfolio, even a scrappy one. Clarity on where to apply. And starting networking way earlier than feels comfortable. The first opportunity almost never comes out of nowhere. It comes from a conversation.
Every new graduate hits the same wall: you need experience to get hired, but you need to get hired to gain experience.
Most of the students who said “I send my CV and nobody replies” were facing a positioning problem. Their CV wasn’t adapted to the role. Their profile wasn’t clear enough to stand out in a pile of hundreds. Or they were waiting to feel ready before applying to roles that scared them a little.
That last one is the real issue. Nobody feels ready. You just have to do it anyway and treat the job search with the same structure and consistency you’d bring to an actual job. That shift alone changes everything.
AI came up, and the questions were good ones. Not only will it replace us, though that was there too, but also are there companies that limit its use? What about the environmental impact of generative tools?
That last question stopped me. A student genuinely worried about the carbon footprint of AI-assisted translation is someone who is thinking at a level most industry veterans haven’t gotten to yet.
My take hasn’t changed: technology amplifies what humans bring to the work. New roles are already here, such as AI language specialists, human validators, and language data curators. The roles that require judgment, relationships, and accountability are becoming more important. The students who will do well are the ones who figure out how to use technology while getting sharper at the things only humans can do.
I went in expecting AI anxiety and job market fear. What I didn’t expect was how invisible project management is to this generation.
Nineteen percent had never considered it as a career path. Another 25.4% were curious but couldn’t have told you what a PM actually does day to day. Only 15.9% saw it as a real option for themselves.
That’s a gap worth paying attention to. Localization project management juggles language, operations, client relationships, and strategy. It’s one of the more stable, well-rounded career paths the industry offers. Especially right now, when work is changing fast, these roles are becoming more central. We’re just not making that visible to the people who need to hear it most.
These students weren’t looking for someone to tell them everything would be fine. They wanted honesty, some direction, and the sense that starting imperfectly was still starting.
That’s why communities like Women in Localization exist. Not to hand people a perfect roadmap, but to make sure no one has to figure it out alone.
To the students at UB: your questions and your engagement made the experience truly meaningful. Keep asking questions, keep exploring, and take full advantage of the opportunities this industry and communities like ours have to offer.
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