One of the great stresses our graduates experience on their way into the working world is- “How do I find a job?”
It would be lovely if a single simple answer existed for that question. But alas, it does not.
This does open up the entire horizon though.
Graduates, you are not limited by your degree, or defined by it. Think of it more as an enhancement to your personal resume.
We checked in with Jared Dye, to see where his degree and studies were taking him, and as you’ll see, its unique, exciting, and possibly unexpected. The spoiler is, he leverages his college experience and studies into a position that not many people would consider.
Let his story be an encouragement for you!
Starting this June, I will be an English Adaptation Specialist at CD Projekt RED, a video game developer in Warsaw, Poland that is best known for the award-winning Witcher franchise. Essentially, I will be adapting (or localizing) the original Polish dialogue and in-game text for the English-language versions of their games.
The road to getting this job was by no means direct or anticipated. If someone had told me three years ago at the beginning of my time at Ohio State that I would be working on video games after graduation, I would have been equal parts confused and excited. At OSU, I pursued dual master’s degrees in Public Administration and Slavic & East European Studies. To be honest, due to the nature of the two programs, I expected my career to begin in the public sector, working on either security or environmental/energy issues. I got interested in Polish studies in my first year at Ohio State when I wanted a second language to study alongside Russian, which I had been studying since beginning my undergraduate Russian degree at Grinnell College.
However, last fall a recruiter from CD Projekt RED reached out to faculty at Ohio State in their search for Polish speakers who might be interested in localization for their upcoming video game projects. SEELC Visiting Assistant Professor Daniel Pratt forwarded the job details to me and I was immediately interested. I’ve been studying Eastern Europe since 2008, but I have been playing video games since I was in elementary school. The prospect of working with a foreign language on a video game, while also getting a chance to live abroad, was too good to ignore.
After three interviews and two translation tests (totaling over 10 hours), they made me an offer. I think several factors helped get me to that point. First, my three years of Polish language study at OSU clearly got me to an appropriate proficiency level. Second, my background in another Slavic language helped me pick up Polish more quickly. Third, graduate level coursework in general gave me strong writing and grammatical skills, which set me apart from other candidates in the translation testing part of the recruitment process. Fourth, CD Projekt RED believed that I was ready to live and work in Poland due to my experience living in Russia for long periods. In other words, even though I did not take any courses at OSU in creative writing, translation, or any other relevant subject, I was still prepared well enough in the language and professional skills necessary to excel in the job.
I cannot wait to get started and am already looking forward to the day when I will get to hear the characters in CD Projekt RED’s games speak the words I have translated for them. I am confident it will be a fun and rewarding experience for me, and I hope my contribution to the games make it more fun for the millions of English-speaking gamers worldwide who play CD Projekt’s games.
