An international Monash Arts student has illustrated the value of intercultural abilities through his impressive work completed in the Monash Industry Experience (IE) program.

Currently completing a Master of Interpreting and Translation Studies, Giulio Serripierri was able to combine his linguistic and intercultural skills to help generate subtitles for the Youth in the City project.

In conjunction with academics from Monash’s Melbourne and Prato (Italy) campuses, Giulio and the Youth in the City team worked with high school students in Prato towards a common objective: to highlight the city of Prato and its multicultural prowess through the lens of high school students.

“I worked on the provisions of subtitles and translations for videos and documents that are used to facilitate the project in classrooms,” Giulio explains.

Giulio thoroughly enjoyed his role in the project with his highlight being translating and creating subtitles from Italian to English.

The IE internship enhanced Giulio’s understanding of the importance of having intercultural skills in the modern world.

“I want to be able to bridge the gap between cultures and that is where collectively my figure of translator and interpreter comes into play,” he said.

Living in a diverse and multicultural world, Giulio believes being able to understand and acknowledge everyone’s cultures, viewpoints and beliefs as well as embrace culture is important.

“Having these skills makes everyone’s life easier and allows us to live harmoniously with each other, especially as the world grows and develops,” he said.

Giulio’s experiences showed him that Monash is fantastic at preparing students for the global workforce. During his studies and internship he was exposed to experiences that were outside of his comfort zone, however were extremely useful as an interpreting and translations student.

“As an interpreter we can attend hearings inside of courtrooms or we can go to hospitals as interpreters,” he said.

It is these experiences that Giulio has highlighted as giving him an understanding of what professional life will look like for him.

“Monash has helped expose me to the environment of the working world and prepared me to be able to stand out when it comes time to compete with others for a job,” he said.

Projects like Youth in the City is just one example of the multitude of opportunities that Monash students have access to through IE.

Following his work in this project, Giulio wants to encourage other students to take part in the IE program and develop their skills for the future.

“The three things I would say to students is enjoy it, be grateful for the opportunity and make the most of it,” he said.

Written by Journalism student intern Oscar Manning (2021)