Alex Aguayo was awarded a CompLit Academic Term Internship Fellowship in Winter 2021 to work as editorial intern at Words Without Borders, the online magazine for world literatures in English translation. He developed skills in securing copyrights and translations contracts, proofreading and uploading translated texts, and managing communication among publishers, author, translators, and editors. One of the most rewarding experiences of the internship involved researching, acquiring the rights to, and translating a chapter of a novel by Panamanian author Javier Stanziola. Alex also had the opportunity to publish a short instructional essay in WWB-Campus, the magazine’s affiliate educational website, and conducted interviews with Galician muralist Yoseba Muruzábal for the magazine’s first Spanish-English bilingual publication.
Alex writes: “The publishing experience I gained during my internship has increased my academic interest in translation studies, allowing me to conceive a course syllabus on world literature and translation, while the technical knowledge I gained has fomented a professional interest in translating and publishing Spanish-language literature.”
