Each month we are spotlighting two of our team members so we can get to know each other a bit better, and recognize their individual contributions to Amara’s mission.
This month’s spotlight is on Mary Beth Strawn and Sebastião Nascimento! We caught up with them to hear about their favorite videos they’ve worked on, what’s happening in their lives right now, and what motivates them at Amara.
Sebastião Nascimento
What I cherish most about Amara is that there are constant opportunities for learning about fascinating people and captivating projects, whether we are dealing with architecture, culinary, music, cinema, radical sports, design, programming, you name it. Some videos are so exciting we just hope a sequel will pop up anytime on our task list, like that one documenting Fela Kuti’s candidacy for president of Nigeria, or the one tracking the thorough decomposition of one of Ryan Heffington’s choreographies into its most basic elements, or that one celebrating Reggae’s influence in the pioneering development of video game music.
Looking back, many of the most captivating videos are themselves the result of a creative field generated by the reciprocal influence between cultures. And that is precisely what I consider to be Amara’s most valuable asset: the scope of life’s experience of its translators stretching across so many cultures. Working within the Amara community we are constantly in touch with people who are passionate about languages and diversity, traveling and learning, people who instead of feeling torn between places, choose to turn their lives into bridges connecting other people, and not shying away from the efforts needed to make the allure of plurality transparent and accessible to others. Friends and people we admire may have brought us here to Amara, but then we come to admire the people we work with and they also become friends. What we do and the kind of people we become while doing it is what makes this so interesting and stimulating.
Mary Beth Strewn
Hello everyone! I’m Mary Beth. I live in Boquete, Panamá, in the western mountain region near Costa Rica.
Some unique things about me are… I’m pregnant with my first child. It’s exciting and scary all at the same time! I work for a Spanish school helping people plan their trips to Panama for a Spanish learning experience. I grew up in Georgia, USA.
I’ve subtitled for Amara for about 8 months now and I have to say that I really enjoy working with our team and producing quality content for clients, who I know appreciate it. A recent project I enjoyed is one where Tracey B. and I worked on a difficult video for a scrutinizing client. Although it was a bit of a frustrating task overall, I am appreciative of the teamwork that went into it and the new understandings I have for some of our guidelines.
I’ve enjoyed working with a few of the videos for an arts-related client. They always focus on interesting topics such as cooking, fashion, photography and art. Art is universal, so I love that we are able to help the client translate these videos into multiple languages for the viewing pleasure of thousands (millions?) of people.
