Meet the team: Yana Dovgopol
Thread poster: Andrew Morris
Andrew Morris
Andrew Morris
Local time: 03:31
ProZ.com team
May 11, 2020

Our conversation took place in English, but Yana Dovgopol could just as easily hold forth in Spanish, Russian or Ukrainian, besides being able to read a smattering of other languages. Her first experience of translation was while working for an aviation plant, and then working in language support at local IT companies. But when her boss mentioned that a Kharkiv agency was looking for someone to help out with Spanish translations, she took on extra work in a freelance capacity. However, she kept ... See more
Our conversation took place in English, but Yana Dovgopol could just as easily hold forth in Spanish, Russian or Ukrainian, besides being able to read a smattering of other languages. Her first experience of translation was while working for an aviation plant, and then working in language support at local IT companies. But when her boss mentioned that a Kharkiv agency was looking for someone to help out with Spanish translations, she took on extra work in a freelance capacity. However, she kept looking for a new full-time challenge and when she shared this with her agency boss, he mentioned that ProZ.com would soon be opening an office in the same building. This was in 2009. That discovery led to a meeting with Jared who was in Ukraine opening up a new office, in the depths of a snowy winter, and the beginning of a new chapter..

But her role at ProZ.com was to be not in translation but in support. A born problem-solver, Yana likes nothing more than spotting stuff that’s not working and finding ways to make it work again. These days her daily routine involves coordinating the support team in Argentina. Something of a relief because previously, Yana was dealing with the entire support system with just one coworker in the Philippines. So these days she spends her time checking the daily list of tickets – all submitted by users at https://go.proz.com/help – to see what problems have arisen, prioritising them, and looking out for any extraordinary issues. Alongside the new tickets, there are also those which are open and ongoing, and still others which have been replied to already. It’s a never-ending list, but they all get dealt with one by one – a busy day can easily involve up to 60 tickets. The most regular issues revolve around payment tickets, invoices, credentials for CPN, and the BlueBoard and of course profiles.

It makes a huge difference that there’s now an entire team on hand to help, down in La Plata. Having received their initial training they open the ticket list and get on with it, looking to Yana for coordination, aiming to provide solutions as quickly as possible.

Yana’s chief motivation is to help users out of a fix and zap any bugs. Of course, the target is 100% resolution, but some issues require the keen eye of the developers. Nevertheless, she and her team probably resolve 60-70% of the issues themselves. Over the years, working with an international team has given Yana a calm, philosophical perspective – “People are the same everywhere,” she says.

Besides being a talented linguist, and a keen student of Latin American music and dance, Yana is also a gifted photographer, whose gorgeous shots – many of which are taken with a mobile – capture the immense skies and stunning colours of Ukraine’s landscapes and cityscapes. Check out her work for yourself at https://www.instagram.com/yana.knopka/

6 Yana
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Meet the team: Yana Dovgopol







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