Student Assistants

Sarah Aldawood, Communication and Outreach Assistant  Summer 2020 - present. Sarah Aldawood is a Ph.D. student in the Comparative Literature Program. She received her MA in the Theory and Practice of Translation from SOAS, University of London, and her BA in English Translation from King Saud University in Saudi Arabia. Her research interests include the sociology of translation, intersemiotic translation, transfiction and modern Arabic literature. She is a native speaker of Arabic.

Aitor Bouso Gavín, Director's Assistant  Summer 2020 - present. Aitor Bouso Gavín holds a B.A. in English Literary and Linguistic Studies from the Universidade da Coruña. In 2018, he earned an M.A. in Advanced English Studies, with a focus on Literary Studies, from a joint program between A Coruña, Santiago, and Vigo universities. From 2018 to 2019, he was a Foreign Language Assistant in the Spanish Department at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts. He is currently a Ph.D. student and Teaching Associate in the Spanish and Portuguese Program at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research interests include Chican@/x and Latin@/x Literary and Cultural Studies; Multiethnic and American Literature; Contemporary Latin American and US Latinx Art; Performance Studies; Body Studies and Somatic Theory. Aside from that, Aitor has been working with translation and interpretation since his sophomore year as an undergraduate student and is a native speaker of Galician and Spanish with knowledge of Portuguese, Italian, and French.

	Irina Lifszyc, Interpreter and Translator in Education Workshop Series and Language Assessment Support  Fall 2020 - present. Irina Lifszyc is a Spanish translator who is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Hispanic Linguistics in the Spanish and Portuguese Studies Program at UMass Amherst, where she is a Teaching Assistant. Her research interests are historical linguistics and morphosyntactic variation. Irina became a translator after graduating from college in Argentina in 2014. While pursuing her M.A. in Spanish, she worked for the Infectious and Tropical Disease Institute transcribing and translating interviews conducted by researchers in rural communities of Ecuador. She has also served as a volunteer translator for Defense for Children International. She is a native speaker of Spanish with knowledge of German and Italian.
	Nefeli Forni Zervoudaki, Interpreter and Translator in Education Workshop Series Instructor and Participant Support Spring 2021 - present. Nefeli Forni Zervoudaki (A.A. University of ORT, Uruguay, BA in Audiovisual Communication, University of Vic, Spain) is a Ph.D. student in the Comparative Literature Program at UMass Amherst. She has worked in translation, interpretation, and education for more than a decade and has taught "Culture, Gender, and Environment" to unaccompanied minor refugees in Barcelona. Her main interests are the representations of gender and sexuality, the effects of film on society, and the interaction between literature and film. She is a native speaker of French and Greek, and her languages also include Spanish and Italian.
	Paulina Ochoa-Figueroa, Assistant for Interpreter and Translator in Education Programming Summer 2020 - present. Paulina Ochoa-Figueroa is originally from Michoacán (México). She received a B.A. in Spanish Literature and Cultures from Manhattan College and an M.A. in Hispanic Literatures and Linguistics from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She continues to study at UMass as a Ph.D. student in the Spanish and Portuguese Program and is currently working on her candidacy exams. She has presented papers on travel and translation, and the work of Spanish author José Moreno Villa at academic conferences. Working with English and Spanish, she is actively involved with translation and holds a graduate certificate in Translation and Interpreting Studies from UMass. She presented on subtitling at this year’s New England Translators Association conference. She regularly collaborates with the Translation Center and was the lead instructor for a remotely taught Medical Interpreting and Translation course for high school students in Texas. At UMass, she also teaches basic- and intermediate-level Spanish.
	Yousuf Al Attar, Office Assistant Fall 2022 - present. Yousuf Al Attar is a first-year undergraduate majoring in Biology. He is a member of the Biological Sciences Talent Advanced Program (BioTAP) and the Commonwealth Honors College. He is bilingual in Arabic and English. He learned Arabic from his parents who are from Iraq. He grew up in West Springfield, Massachusetts. As an active student, he did a lot of volunteering for his town through his high school. His goal is to go to optometry school after he completes his undergraduate degree.
	Tiffany Ni, Office Assistant Fall 2022 - present. Tiffany Ni is currently a first-year undergraduate majoring in Computer Science. She is a native speaker of Chinese and is excited to put her knowledge of the language combined with her area of study in computers to use at the Translation Center. In her free time, she enjoys skateboarding, playing badminton, and learning more about programming languages.
	Jimena Pueyo-García, Office Assistant Fall 2022 - present. Jimena Pueyo-García is a first-year undergraduate majoring in Political Science and Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies. She plans to minor in Spanish. She is originally from Madrid, Spain and moved to Salem, Massachusetts 16 years ago. She is fluent in both Spanish and English.
	Nishant Parhi, Language Lab Assistant Fall 2021 - present. Nishant Parhi is currently a junior pursuing a Bachelor of Computer Engineering degree and a secondary major in Astronomy. He speaks Hindi, Odiya, English, Bengali and even knows how to speak the language of a computer. He completed high school in Bhubaneswar, Odisha, and then relocated to the United States to further study Astronomy and Computer Engineering at UMass Amherst. The Translation Center provides an opportune environment for him to apply and develop his knowledge and skills into bettering the communities near and far.