COVER STORY
by Laura Dorsey, Master Storyteller
Languages put our worlds
in focus, give shape to
our thoughts, and help
us to communicate with
the others around us.
Translating from one
language to another is
the most artful of creative
exercises. Few people know this better
than Melina Torrico, CEO of Global Voice
Translations, a top-rated translation
service, which translates documents or
anything else that requires professional
language experts. She understands that
for their clients, the translator is their
most important ally, with an awareness
that the translator is a patron to humanity.
And humanity is what it is all about for
Melina because she is a people person.
She recently sat down to translate her
transition into this phenomenal business,
which has a tag line of “many languages,
one voice”.
A child is taught to articulate the
languages belonging to their culture.
This was probably the start of her love for
languages. Born in California, Melina and
her family (mom, dad, and sister) moved
to Bolivia South America to live for seven
years. While there, she perfected her
Spanish in reading and writing. Without
the capability to translate between
two languages, she might have been
constrained to the boundaries of just one
country. Her first language instruction
taught her that words have memories,
a story of their own. There are never
two words that have exactly the same
meaning. To reconstruct one language
into another language, she knew that she
needed to understand what went into
making the original language for her to
disassemble it and rebuild it in the other
language.
Even she did not immediately see that
her love of language would translate
into a business. Still, Melina also knew
that she wanted to do something that
helped others. She realized that she
had an attitude of servitude. Melina
tried a variety of career paths related to
customer services such as telemarketing,
theme parks, and retail sales. It was not
until she started working for another
big company that her eyes were open
to the need for translation services.
COURTESY KALYSA WILSON
18 IBA Success Magazine n VOL 6, Issue 2