Archive of Our Own

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Elin, who volunteers as a Communications Event Coordinator and Translation Volunteer Manager.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?
I currently hold two different positions at the OTW.

For one, I'm part of the Communication committee's Events Coordination team. As an example for what we do, whenever you see a post on the AO3 homepage celebrating a milestone, or on the OTW website commemorating one of our anniversaries, I might have had a hand in it! We also organize special activities to go with some events, such as a a themed bingo we did recently, the special anniversary skin we released for AO3's 15th anniversary, or even our annual International Fanworks Day (IFD).

As for my second role, I'm also a volunteer manager in our Translation committee. It's a very varied position, as volunteer managers pull the strings behind the scenes necessary to keep a 200+ people strong committee running smoothly. That encompasses a lot of different day-to-day tasks. Some of those tasks include: preparing documents for translation, and assigning them to translators, helping translate news posts and posts concerning larger events, such as the OTW's Membership Drive, and are generally being the first point of contact for any problems a translator might run into. And that's just a small part of our work!

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

Honestly it varies a lot! Like most OTW volunteers, I have a day job that takes up a lot of my time and energy during the week, so I'll typically do small, quick tasks on weeknights, if possible. Those tasks that require a sustained amount of focus and effort I try to save for the weekend. It also varies by time of year how much work I do for each of my roles! For example, when IFD rolls around in February (and during the months leading up to it), my workload during the week might increase for a time.

What made you decide to volunteer?

Story old as time, I suppose, but I've been reading fanfic on AO3 for a long time (since I was 14 or 15, I believe) without getting into fan communities much. I really wanted to return something to fandom space at large, and AO3 in particular. When I saw that the OTW was recruiting for German translators, I applied, and was accepted!

During my time as an active translator (volunteer managers usually mostly step back from that) my work included translating all these amazing news posts other volunteers had written. I wanted to try my hand at coming up with posts myself, which was one of my motivations to apply as an Event Coordinator. And then I realized that as a volunteer manager I'd have even more varied tasks I could tackle, so I switched roles inside the Translation committee last year!

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Probably figuring out how to balance my day job/hobbies/relationships with OTW volunteering! For me personally it's very easy to head straight into burnout, as I'm very enthusiastic about any new tasks I've taken on. However, there are always more things to do, and I've had to learn to occasionally take a step back and take a break, the better to sustain my enjoyment of the work I do!

What fannish things do you like to do?

Reading fanfic, primarily! In a variety of fandoms, for a variety of ships (or platonic relationships). More recently, I've also started taking more of an interest in other online fan spaces, though I tend to lurk more than actively involve myself. Otherwise, I like creating my own AO3 site skins – ⁠I find it quite meditative – ⁠and I swear one of these days I'll actually commit to finishing a story myself and posting it.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out previous Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Last November we asked the community to submit questions to our OTW volunteers in celebration of International Volunteer Day. In this series of posts we will spotlight some of our committees' responses.

The Translation committee's main responsibility is making content from the OTW and its various projects accessible to fans who don't speak English. This includes content for the organization's main site, FAQs on AO3, Open Doors import announcements, and AO3 news posts, among other things. They also collaborate with other OTW committees, for example to help them communicate with non-English speaking fans and users.

We asked the Translation committee for replies to your questions, and received a lot of feedback! Below you can find a selection of their answers:

Translation Committee Specific Question

Question: Is there a software required if one wanted to volunteer? Also, are there any specific devices required?
Committee answer:
While we have no specific software requirements for volunteering, we definitely recommend using a device with a bigger screen in general, like a desktop or a laptop, or at least a tablet, as that makes it easier to keep everything you need for your work on your screen. One of our requirements for any software we use is that it can run in a common internet browser on a computer, without any local installs, though they may require an app on mobile devices.

General Questions

How many hours a week do you spend on your OTW volunteer work?

• It varies a lot week to week! Some weeks are very quiet and there's not a lot to work on, but when I do get an assignment, I tend to spend about a couple of hours on it, and that will usually be it for the week unless we're working on time sensitive tasks or projects, when things can get more hectic! Translation in particular sets generous deadlines to complete our assignments (5 or 7 days depending on what we're working on), which gives us plenty of time to work on it even after RL work hours and factoring in other real life things. I also sometimes help the Tag Wrangling team with their Spanish tags, but that accounts for a couple of minutes of quick work overall, I'd say. So... tl;dr, about 2-3 hours, give or take, depending on what we have to do for the week! (Saku)
• It depends on the task, but an average of 2-3 hours per week suffices. (Nameless_ghoul_7)

How do you manage your volunteer time, and do you do the same thing every day like with a day job?

• I usually find time for this during the weekend, considering my day job, so it's more of a weekend activity for me. And I prefer to do my translation in one go, and then go through it again afterwards in my free time post weekday work.
  It's definitely taught me to be good at time management, because you can't predict how your week is going to go at any point. (Ana)
• I use a time tracker to help me track the time I spend on OTW volunteer tasks, though that usually ends up working more in retrospective, where towards the end of each week I look at the hours I did to evaluate whether my current workload is adequate or whether I should delegate some of my work to other people (or if that's not an option, what I can deprioritise and put off until a bit later). I usually try to pick up some volunteer manager or chair trainee work every other day or so (unless I'm working on something that requires daily attention), just to avoid driving myself insane, because at the end of the day there's always more work I could be picking up still. (Rhine)

What's your favorite part about volunteering at the OTW?

• My favourite part of volunteering at the OTW has been meeting several new people from around the world and seeing how our different POVs and experiences help with different understandings of life in different spaces and how independently of our differences, cultures and upbringing we're united by pure passion for what we do in and for fandom. Passion and compassion is often hidden or missing in "work spaces" and the OTW has been a positive space filled with positive learning experiences for me since the moment I started volunteering. It's an ever evolving space that takes every instance to be better. (CottonDuck)
• I was going to say "the people!" and that is mostly true (I've met some wonderful folks as part of Translation, and it's been a great time overall!), but if I sit down to really think about it, I think my favorite part is that it feels very gratifying to be giving back to a community that has done so much for fandom and fan spaces. I don't read a lot of fanfiction myself anymore, much as I do occasionally write it, but fandom is still very important to me and I've made a lot of good friends thanks to it, so it feels good to be able to contribute my time and skills and do something for a space that has done so much for me in turn. It's good work and good people all around, and it feels good to be part of it through my work for the OTW and AO3. (Saku)

What's the aspect of volunteer work with the OTW that you most wish more people knew about?

• How chill the Translation volunteer managers are! If we need something, be it a hiatus, more time on a task, or clarification on some part of the text, we’re pretty much always granted them! And having a full week to do the task is very nice too, I originally thought it was going to be much more hectic. (kati)
• The sheer scope of work that is involved! There are so many volunteers, like, seriously, *so many*, and each of us have our own little roles to perform, thus helping everything run like clockwork. Having said all that, it's all strictly on a volunteer basis, which makes it probably the only “work place” I've seen where we all actually enjoy doing what we do. (Ana)

What does a typical day as an OTW volunteer looks like for you?

• Mostly the same as any normal day. Only that I set apart one or two hours most days to translate what's been assigned to me. (ttom)
• It varies a lot! As Translation volunteer managers, we handle several different tasks, depending on the time of year, and what projects are currently going on. For example, if I'm on duty for managing our email inbox and handing out tasks for the week—we alternate regularly—I'll set aside around 2-3 hours a day after work for that. When we are recruiting for new translators, I'll spend a chunk of time in a week holding interviews. There are also routine tasks that each of us rotates through, like preparing meetings or coordinating the upload of translated content to the OTW and AO3 websites. Independent of the task, I usually work through shorter items on my to-do list on weekday nights, and leave bigger tasks for the weekend. (Elin)

What is your favorite animal? Alternatively, do you have a favorite breed of cat/dog?

• Cats... I love cats and I have one. (Nameless_ghoul_7)
• Cats, giraffes, turtles, butterflies, and I can go on. As for cats, I love the Egyptian Maus that I currently have. (AnneHelena)
• My favourite animal is the betta! I loved aquaculture a lot!! My favourite breed of dog is the Indian Pariah Dog. (Aditi Mandavgane)

Do you enjoy reading fanfic? If so, what's your favorite work on AO3?

• I love reading fanfics and it's difficult to choose a favourite one. But among the recent fics I am reading, Bifurcation Sandbox by Gardenersnake8822 is a favourite. (Gloriosa)
• I love reading fanfic! It's definitely become a hobby, and has been the brunt of my reading as of late (because books are expensive < / 3). It's really difficult to pick a favorite work, since I've read so many amazing fics, but if I had to pick one, I'd pick "The Lowlander" by user foxymoxy! It's a BTS-Dragon Age crossover fic that takes the captor/prisoner trope and really dissects and does something interesting with it. It's one of my all-time favorites, and I re-read it all the time. (Somber)

Do you write any fanfic yourself? What do you enjoy about it?

• Yes! I have a writing account on some platforms like AO3 (ofc, duh), Twitter, Wattpad, and Medium. There are so many things I love about writing. But, I’m going to list 3 of them here:
  1. I can finally read my ship in tropes that I really wanted to read.
  2. The research process. I gained knowledge while doing my hobby. I learn how to write better, to portray the emotion better, to explore and experiment with my characters’ personality, discover interesting information, and so on.
  3. It helps me clear my mind. (Keane)
• I used to write original stories that never went anywhere and only started writing and publishing fanfiction in order to learn about AO3's user interface so that I could translate the tutorials more accurately. I like how freeing it feels not to have to worry too much about writing well enough for the general audience – it's just me and the five people (at most) who will ever see my silly little stories! (Slovenian Translation volunteer)

What fandoms are you (currently) in?

• I’m currently obsessed with F1: The Movie and Ocean's Eleven Trilogy. (Cassie)
• I've been in the Star Wars fandom for more than 20 years at this point, mostly on the Rogue One / Andor side nowadays. (Auré)

Do you feel glad or proud to see fanfiction in your mother tongue?

• My answer is yes, absolutely! Especially on AO3 in particular, because Mandarin Chinese authors have been facing immense opposition in the form of censorship and takedowns of both digital and physical publications of our works. The 227 incident that resulted in AO3 being banned in Mainland China was a major turning point in the involvement of AO3 within Chinese fandom communities, so every time I see a new Mandarin Chinese work on AO3 I'm always grateful that one more author has found a safe avenue to share their creations with the rest of fandom. (Chinese Translation volunteer)
• Absolutely! My first language is Portuguese and I always find it surprising when I see works on some fandoms that are definitely not popular in my country. It’s like an invisible thread suddenly connects me to someone I don’t know but share two things in common: a language and a love for a fandom that makes us want to spend time and effort creating something to share with that community. Funny enough, I usually like to read fanfics in the language my brain associates them with. For example, I don’t speak Korean, and I usually watch K-dramas with English subtitles to continue learning English, so that’s the language my brain associates that series with. When I see a work in Portuguese for that fandom, it’s like my horizons have suddenly been broadened. And if I get a chance to make an online friend because of it? Even better! (Amanda)
• I translate English to Marathi, and I don't see a lot of Marathi fanfic on the site, but when I stumble upon one, my heart soars and I feel on top of the world! (Aditi Mandavgane)

Thanks so much to every volunteer who took the time to answer!

(For more answers from Translation volunteers, check out this work on AO3, where we'll collect additional replies to each question!)

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, OTW Legal Advocacy, and Transformative Works and Cultures. We are a fan-run, donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Rhine, who volunteers as a volunteer manager in the Translation Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

As a Translation volunteer manager I mostly deal with admin work that surrounds the work our translators do – be it talking to other committees about things that are to be translated, preparing English texts for translation, making sure our version of the text is up to date, or getting texts published once they are translated – along with more general personnel stuff like recruiting new translators, keeping a clear record of who is supposed to be working on what and who is on break, checking in with translators and how they feel about their work, that kind of thing. Having been in this role for some time now, I also help with mentoring newer volunteer managers in how to do what we do, at the scale we do it.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

There isn't one singular stereotypical week in this role, but some different modes with different focuses that are more or less typical for me:

• Going on-call for a week: Translation volunteer managers work from a shared inbox that serves as a first point of contact for all inquiries related to the Translation Committee. Each week, one or two volunteer managers go on-call as the ones primarily responsible for making sure everything gets actioned and squared away as needed. This usually means spending a couple hours each day working through everything in the shared inbox, including but not limited to assigning tasks to translators, checking on translators who were on hiatus, triaging translation requests from other committees, and responding to any questions translators may have in the course of their work.
• Working on a bigger project, like a series of high-visibility posts (e.g. membership drive, OTW Board elections), opening recruitment, or internal surveys: When Translation does a committee-wide thing, it'll by necessity involve most or even all of our forty-some language teams, each with 1–8 members. Coordinating all that takes some organisational overhead (and some love for checklists and spreadsheets, along with automations where feasible), which typically means sitting down for a few hours on three or four days of the week and chipping away at various related tasks to keep things moving, including but not limited to asking other people to double-check my work before moving on to the next step.
• Working on smaller tasks: When I want to have a more relaxed week while still being active, I'll sit down on one or two afternoons/evenings, and take care of a task that is fairly straightforward, like scheduling and leading chats to check in with translators or train people on our tools, creating a template document with English text for translation, drafting and updating our internal documentation, asking others to look over and give feedback on my drafts, and giving feedback on others' tasks, drafts, and projects.
• Weekly chair training/catch-up chats: We have a regular weekly meeting slot to sit down and talk about the few chair-exclusive things in the Translation Committee, as part of chair training.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I actually started volunteering at the OTW as an AO3 tag wrangler back in 2020, when lockdowns were on the horizon and I felt like I could pick up some extra stuff to do. Growing up bilingual and with some extra languages under my belt, I ended up hanging out in some of the spaces with lots of OTW translators. Then I found out that I could internally apply as a Translation volunteer manager, and the rest is pretty much history. At that point I was missing the feeling of doing some volunteer management and admin work anyway!

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

On a high level, I'd say it's striking a balance between the expectations and the reality of the work the Translation Committee does, including the sheer scale. On a more concrete level, it's like this: Being a translator in the Translation Committee is, by default, a relatively low commitment, with a number of optional tasks and rosters that we encourage people to take on, if they have the time and attention to spare. Part of how we ensure that is by dealing with as much of the overhead in advance as we can, as Translation volunteer managers.

This means that for instance, when the English version of a text is updated – which may take about two minutes in the original text – we go through each language team's copy of the text, make the changes as needed in the English copy, highlight what was changed, and reset the status in our internal task tracker so that it can be reassigned to a translator. This way the changed part is clearly visible to the translator, so they can quickly pinpoint what they need to do and make the corresponding changes in the translated text.

For both the author of the original English text and the translator, this is a very quick task. On the admin side, on the other hand, it's the same two-minute process of updating our documents repeated over and over, about 15 times on the low end for frequent news post series that we only assign to teams that consistently have some buffer to absorb the extra workload, and almost 50 times on the high end for some of our staple static pages that (almost) all teams have worked on, meaning it's something that takes somewhere between 30 minutes to almost two hours even when it's a tiny change and you're familiar with the workflow.

(And that's before getting to very last-minute changes and emergency news post translations with less than two days' turnaround time, where we manually track everything across around thirty teams, usually. Each time that has happened, everyone's dedication has blown me away. Thank you so much to everyone who answers those calls, you know who you are!)

What fannish things do you like to do?

I like to read, especially if it's something that plays around with worldbuilding or other things that were left unsaid in canon. I wish there were more hours in the day so that I can pick up some of my creative projects again. I suppose some of my coding projects like my AO3 userscripts and my AO3 Saved Filters bookmarklet also count as fannish?

Now that our volunteer's said five things about what they do, it's your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with LPCollins, who volunteers as a Dutch translator and beta reader for the Translation Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I am part of the Translation committee, more specifically as a translator and beta reader for the Dutch team. (Hallo, iedereen!) I have also recently found my way into the Tag Wrangling committee, but that is all still very new and shiny, so I’ll be focussing on my role in Translation for this post. That role pretty much means that I help with the translation of the AO3 FAQs and tutorials, news posts, email templates and the occasional tag or user ticket that arrives in Dutch, a rare treat when speakers of your language are very accustomed to using English in online spaces. I am very proud of the role that our committee gets to play in diversifying the OTW and slowly but surely making it more accessible for users world-wide. Compared to the userbase speaking Chinese, Spanish or Russian, Dutch may seem like a very tiny, not-so-important piece of that puzzle, but doesn’t that only make it cooler that we can support such languages too?

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

One of my absolute favorite things about the Translation committee is that you get to schedule the work according to your own needs. I am a chaos demon with fluctuating energy levels, so I’m not sure about having a “typical week” and that’s perfectly fine with Translation.

Basically, at some point one of our lovely volunteer managers will send me an assignment, either a document that needs to be translated from scratch or a translation from one of my teammates that I need to beta read. Assignments always have a deadline too, shorter ones for urgent news posts and longer ones for longer documents. Depending on the length of the document, what I need to do with it, my mood and the alignment of the stars, I might do it right away, or spread it out over a week, or just do it on the day of the deadline. Then I let our staff know that I’m done and they send me a new task and so on. There have been weeks when I didn’t complete a single task and there have been days when I completed two, and it just works for me.

What made you decide to volunteer?

Look, I seem to be living in a world where all the paid jobs aren’t very interesting and all the interesting jobs aren’t very paid. (Will take recommendations for other worlds.) Point is, I am always drawn to ways to help organizations that I care about with a hands-on approach. Before I joined the OTW, I was a volunteer for IMAlive’s crisis support chat (big shout-out to Random Acts for providing my training), which I loved doing but unfortunately became too time-consuming when I needed to start working on my master’s thesis. Since I had been spending a lot of time on AO3 for years at that point, the OTW was an easy next target for when I did have some spare time again.

I also have a degree in Dutch and English linguistics and literature, so translator was definitely one of the most appealing OTW positions from the get-go. I distinctly remember waiting for a chance to apply, checking every Translation recruitment post that popped up on AO3 to see if they needed someone for Team Dutch yet, as the committee always recruits for specific languages. As soon as Dutch was listed in one of the posts, I didn’t hesitate about applying, and I was lucky enough to be welcomed to the team. Already two years have passed since then and I haven’t regretted it for a single second.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Not gonna lie, I have witnessed some big internal discussions since joining the OTW, both about real-world events and about our own processes. I feel like those have been fought over enough, though, so I’ll share a challenge that’s more specific for Team Dutch.

In case you don’t know, Dutch is an official language in three countries: the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname. Unfortunately, Suriname isn’t currently represented in our team, but we do have both Belgian and Dutch folks, and despite our countries being right next to each other, there are actually some differences between Belgian Dutch and Dutch… Dutch. (Just ask how we end our emails.) They definitely aren’t big enough to separate the languages, but we do try to walk that middle ground in our translations and make sure that everything sounds good for everyone. So sometimes I will be beta reading a document and change something that just sounds way too Dutch to me and sometimes one of my teammates will point out that they would never use my suggested turn of phrase in the Netherlands. As a linguist, I find this very interesting, but it is also quite challenging to avoid colloquialisms when you’re not even always aware of them!

What fannish things do you like to do?

First and foremost, I’m a fanfic writer. Always have been (even before I knew that there was a word for it) and always will be. As a writer, I also have an atrocious habit and it goes something like this: start a very long fic, pour out new chapters religiously for months and months, stumble upon a different fandom, come up with a fic idea for said new fandom that “surely won’t take long and that I just need to get out of my system so that I can return to the existing WIP in peace” aaaaand repeat. Dear reader, if you happen to be following one of my stories, I am so, so sorry, I swear I will finish it one day.

The love of my life is Supernatural and I will always come back to it, but I’m also very good at falling very hard for other fandoms on the side, ranging from The Boys to Danny Phantom to the latest Neil Gaiman-related show to Helluva Boss to anything that Richard Speight, Jr. worked on. One of my favorite things to do is hyperfixate on something new, then grab my friends by the shoulders and shake them until they agree to watch it too so that I can yell at them about it.

Of course I read fanfics too, mostly in short bursts when I’m looking for a very specific type of fic. For my wallet’s sake, I limit the number of Supernatural conventions I can go to to one per year. I perpetually have a Discord tab open to stay in touch with fellow fans, will occasionally scour YouTube for fanvids and spend the rest of my fandom time on the best social media site ever, Tumblr. (Kidding, not kidding.)

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan-run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Silarona, who volunteers for our Translation Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I’m a translator and team-coordinator in Team Hungarian and a graphics volunteer for the Translation committee. Our team translates all content you can find in Hungarian on the site: the FAQs, Tutorials, News Posts. (Those three are my favourites. Who needs a normal, regular-length post with nice sentences? It’s either 30 pages of interface talk or announcements with untranslatable fandom terms.) We are also the ones who will help Support, Abuse and Tag Wrangling if needed, so you can contact the OTW or tag stuff in Hungarian and it’ll be answered / wrangled to the right place.

As a team-coordinator I’m responsible for (hopefully) remembering if we as a team have a task or a decision to make—this is usually things like keeping our internal cheatsheet up-to-date, being ready with the texts we use for recruitment and checking translated graphics.

The graphics are edited by a separate team from the committee based on the translations the language teams put together. Sometimes it’s easy, like when I can snatch up the Hungarian graphics, and sometimes I butcher stuff, like when I tried to make my Photoshop handle Bengali and it firmly refused.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I usually work in bursts, because I’m a procrastinator. Translators get week-long deadlines (depending on the length and urgency of the task) and we get helpful little reminders the day before our deadline, which is wonderful because then I finally remember that I have a task. This worked much better before I asked for the long documents—with more than 4 years at the OTW, I still can’t translate 16 pages in one sitting. (My comfortable limit is 5, with our two column view.)

This gets faster during Drives and Elections, when there is a lot of time-sensitive content and graphics to do, while I sometimes sit on a longer task for weeks when I’m busy with other stuff.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I saw Hungarian in the list of contact languages for the OTW, and I sent them a (very mistyped) message saying I’d love to help out if they need more people, because I could not get over the fact that my little language was available here. Does the OTW have recruitment periods and proper channels for this? Yes. Did I check anything about this? No. (Don’t do this. Check the recruitment notices!) I was lucky that the Hungarian team was relatively small then, so they allowed me to apply even though I trampled all over the procedure.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Maybe setting my limits. I adore volunteering for the OTW — it pulled me out of some darker spots during the years and it’s very important to me. I also have a very chaotic offline schedule, with sometimes basically nothing but free time for months, during which I almost applied to other, more demanding roles so many times. Later I could give thanks to all the deities that I did not apply when my work started up again and I was unable to keep up with even current Translation tasks for months. I still haven’t grown out of this, so I’m just waiting for the day when my good judgement slips.

What fannish things do you like to do?

Besides spending an unhealthy amount of time on AO3 (don’t we all), I’m a fanartist. It’s also my pet peeve that the archive should have more fanart. I know it can be complicated compared to text, but upload your fanart and videos and all kinds of other creations to it! There are tutorials for this. All the pros of AO3 (tags, filtering, collections, easy search and archiving, etc) apply to every kind of fannish work, not just fic [commercial over].

I usually paint traditionally, sometimes on odd things like fans or notebooks (I bind custom-made notebooks too). I’m trying to draw a comic with questionable speed. I also beta-read, mostly for my fandom spouse. I have Moments when I sign up to four different fandom events in a week, then spend the next half a year in Bangs and Secret Santas, just to spend the next half a year remembering I can paint random stuff too.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Alba, who volunteers as a Translation volunteer for Team Catalan.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

Like other Translation teams, Team Catalan translates a variety of documents related to the OTW and its projects. Doing this makes them more accessible to even more people and creates a feeling of inclusion. My experience as a fan has been largely through English, and it is only now that I have to incorporate many common fannish terms to the translations to Catalan, that I realise that I need to change and adapt things. Thus, I believe every translation team’s work contributes to recognise the variety of cultures that come together in Fan Culture, as well as to a global enrichment of all of those. I like thinking that by means of translation we also make place for Fan Culture in our own languages. Is this too much to say? Perhaps, but it is a nice thought I hope to be realising.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

Study, work and make the most of my free time to watch something, read and complete OTW’s tasks. I think it is quite ordinary, not that much different from how it used to be before volunteering: I simply adapt the division of time to what I want or have to do. I would love to say that I organize my time efficiently and have a well-established routine, but the truth is I do everything along the way as I get the deadlines. I admit to being a terrible procrastinator, so OTW’s tasks are the perfect excuse to postpone things with less of a guilty feeling. I also recently fixed a couple of days a month to revise which documents need uploading so as to avoid them building up. Improvements in the organising field are a work in progress.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I had been fatally charmed by fanworks, fan activity and the space that fandom offered long ago. I spent great times thanks to AO3 and their creators, so I wanted to be involved somehow. I came across an OTW recruiting post for Translation and signed up without further thinking. I was sure it was a great opportunity to learn more about fan culture and improve my skills as a translator.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Well, I already unveiled my not being the most organised person in the planet. Thank you staff for your patience! I am really shy and sometimes struggle to engage or voice my thoughts, so I can be rather passive. However, I ended up becoming co-coordinator of the Catalan team. In order to ensure we keep going in the right direction, improving our translations and helping the team become more comfortable in general, I am trying to do better in this too.

To be honest I was particularly surprised by the close and humane interactions between members of the team as well as the organization as a whole. Thus, despite my struggles I feel like I want to reciprocate, so I hope to be able to implement little by little everything the OTW is teaching me in the management of the team and future projects.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I keep a low activity profile at the moment, as I am not involved in any particular project. When I know enough, I would love to help with fansubbing. On another note, I love parody and dubbing videos I find around social media. So funny and creative! I also discovered recently an interest for Fan Studies and studies of transformative works, which I hope to pursue in the future. Thanks to all fanfic creators who helped me discover it. I hope I can keep reading your amazing stories for a long time!

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Rosa, who volunteers as a Translation volunteer for Team Swedish.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I translate news posts and other types of documentation for the OTW from English to Swedish. That means I help to make the work the OTW does more accessible for people and spread the information about transformative works outside of the English-speaking world. Most Swedes are fluent in English and don’t expect things on the internet to be available in Swedish, but having access to things in your native language still helps create a global community of fans.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

As a translator, I’m assigned tasks to either translate a document from English to Swedish or to beta an already translated one from one of my teammates. (Team Swedish is a pretty big team for such a small language, and we use a two-beta system, which means every post we put out has been betaed twice.) So when I get a task, I look at it, do a quick time estimate and then make a mental slot in my schedule of when to do it. The deadlines (and possibility for extensions) vary depending on what type of task it is, and how long it is. When I sit down to do the work, it’s very straightforward. The documents we’re assigned are very structured and easy to work with. Hats off to the people doing the prep-work!

A few times per week, I also log onto the OTW chat system to see if a) a tag wrangler has encountered some Swedish tags they need help wrangling (rarely happens, but when it does it’s so much fun!) or b) Staff has an ad hoc translation/update that needs to be done quickly.

I’m also signed up to help out with translating Support tickets and Policy & Abuse tickets, but so far, none have come my way. I have a feeling most Swedes send in their tickets in English.

What made you decide to volunteer?

Not to sound overly dramatic, but in the fall of 2019 I was feeling very adrift and looking for a purpose (as one does, from time to time). I saw a post on Tumblr about the OTW looking for volunteers and thought that this could be a purpose. Giving back to the fannish community could be a purpose!

I’m still so excited I was picked to do this work!

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

...updating the Cheatsheet. No, the Cheatsheet (the team glossary where the language teams decide on how to translate fannish and OTW-related words/terms like ‘ship (verb)’ and ‘ship (noun)’ or ‘anti-circumvention provisions’) is a lifesaver! It is one of those things we translators love to hate, because some words/terms are very hard to translate in ways that make sense. Particularly, legal terms relating to a legal system that may not have an equivalence outside of the country where the law exists.

This does relate to my biggest challenge, though, or what I’ve struggled with the most, and that’s scrutinizing and reevaluating how I use both English and my native Swedish, especially when it comes to where the languages intersect. So many fandom terms only exist in English (for me). I learned these words and terms through English in English spaces, and finding ways to speak about them in Swedish has been difficult at times.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I mostly write and read fanfiction. And talk endlessly with friends who, for some reason, never grow tired of me even though some of us aren’t in the same fandoms anymore. Nothing feeds the plot bunnies as much as bouncing ideas with other fans. I’m very open about my fannish life outside of fandom, which has made me the go-to person for everyone at work when they need to have a fannish moment, even if I don’t have any/limited knowledge of the source material. It’s the best! I’ve learned so much about Star Wars, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Doctor Who, and James Bond over cups of coffee in the breakroom.

I also spend some time making sure the Swedish pages on Wikipedia for the OTW and AO3 are updated. (I still haven’t made a single edit on Fanlore, which I’m greatly ashamed of.)

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Akima Ras, who volunteers as a Translation volunteer for Team Persian.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

One of the missions of the OTW is to make fannish content and community more accessible for people around the world. By volunteering as a translator for Team Persian, and the Translation Committee as a whole, I believe that we’re helping to make everything feel easier and simpler to use. In the future, it can become a space that might feel closer to home for those who, for a variety of reasons, don’t or can’t live in their home countries anymore. Aside from that, I’m also a staffling for our Webs Committee, who fights WordPress alongside other Webs staff to maintain OTW’s website and tries to get it to behave when other committees need technical assistance.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

Due to my mostly nonexistent schedule, I don’t really have a typical week. When I actually manage to sit down unbothered behind my laptop, in the early hours of the morning, I tackle a variety of responsibilities based on my mood and how nigh the due date is. It’s usually the translation task I’m assigned, followed by doc managing ones collecting dust 90% of the time. That means preparing around three or so dozen docs for translation, which can sometimes seem like a daunting project to tackle. To mix things up sometimes, I check OTW’s main website and its relatives to see if they require updates, then switch to our internal task boards to do some housekeeping.

What made you decide to volunteer?

It seems like such a long time ago, [laughs], but when I first decided to volunteer, I actually noticed the recruitment post on AO3 for the very first time. I usually didn’t pay that part of the page much heed, and if I did, it was no more than a cursory glance, but for some reason, it caught my eye that time, and I clicked the link. That somehow led me to the Translation Committee world map, and I noticed that there are no peeps from my country nor any who translate from English to Persian.

That was the reason. The realization that it felt like giving back to the community that had given so much to me, in a way, came later. In the beginning, seeing that map and noticing that there was no team Persian somehow made me wonder if OTW would want to have their site translated to my mother tongue. I contacted our Volunteers & Recruitment Committee, I assume, asking if they would be interested in that, and to my utmost surprise— because there were no translator recruitments back then — they said yes. And the rest, as they say, is history.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

Actually, the experience has been so new, exciting, and rewarding that I can’t come up with a response for this one. I mean, I can talk about how difficult it is to find the equivalent of pinch-hitter (a term for a stand-in writer in challenges) in the Persian language (there are none); or I can talk about the untamable navigation menus of OTW’s website which, regardless of one’s tinkering method, remain three lines long and overflowing with random pages with long, long names. But it’s all part of volunteering for OTW.

P.S. In hindsight, maybe the latter can actually qualify as a challenge. Those hours and days that I believed that I had broken the site by fixing the ones for our three or so dozen languages were very stressful.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I’ve always loved stories and books, so reading fanfiction is a favorite pastime. I’m also an avid consumer of fanart on Tumblr and Deviant Art, and fanvids from the fandoms I’m interested in. That said, whenever my muses grace me with their presence, and real life allows, I write fics to give back to the fandom, appreciate other writers, give gifts to friends, and pen stories that I’d like to read.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Mirissa, who volunteers as a Translation volunteer for Team Kyrgyz.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

My role in the OTW community is just the same as the other translators. I translate news and other OTW documents to help the community grow and make the experience for other people more comfortable. When I applied to be a translator for the Kyrgyz language there was no Kyrgyz language on the list of the application form. I wasn’t extremely surprised, because this language is not very well known, but it really is similar to Kazakh. It’s funny how long it took me to realize that I was the only translator on the team.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

My week as a volunteer isn't that unusual. Honestly, I am the type of person to procrastinate and do all the work at the last minute. But with my translation assignments, I take my time on them and try to make them the best way possible. I’m mostly on time, but sometimes I might face some technical issues, so my assignments might be overdue. Not only do I translate different documents, but since I am the only person on the Kyrgyz language team I also act as a beta.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I’ve been reading fanfics on AO3 for a long time after finding a really well-written work 3 years ago. As I got signed up for it and went through news posts I noticed a post saying that they needed translators. I got really interested in it and filled in the application form. At first I didn’t know which language team I should volunteer for, because I know Russian pretty decently as well, so it took me some time to figure out that I wanted to share my native language with the community.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

In the beginning, I was trying my best to get used to the system of how this role worked. Eventually, I got used to everything until the time to translate the membership drives came. I did understand the condition to finish it in 5 days, so I thought “Why not do it?” Maybe I had some challenges because the language I’m translating into might be a bit confusing for non-native speakers. So, I had to confirm something with the staff. I’m glad it all turned out well in the end.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I do not really stand out in the area of fannish stuff. Just like everyone, I do read fanfics and I also write my own fanfics on AO3. Well, I also do aesthetic journaling, but not that often since it really does take me a lot of time. I also watch videos of my favorite anime and Japanese voice actors, who doesn’t do that? I think that’s all I do as a fan (I’m thinking I sound really boring, don’t I?).

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in the comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Koteneko, who volunteers with the Translation Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

Being a translator for the Ukranian team, I make the OTW and all its projects easier to access for non-English speakers, so that everyone can know about transformative works, their legal status, etc. It encourages people to create fanworks by spreading knowledge about their legitimate nature.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

What does the word "typical" even mean? XD My daily life makes it nearly impossible to create some stable schedule, but I try to use every bit of my free time efficiently. Sometimes (seldom, but still) I can do translation even on my way to the uni, for example. I'm trying not to miss any deadlines (although I don't always succeed), so mostly I work on tasks either on the same day I receive them or on Fridays and weekends.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I have been a huge fan of fanworks for almost five years now, and it all started from fanfiction. I was really into one particular fandom at that time. I would read tons of fics in it in my second native language, and one day it simply wasn't enough. I've loved English (and studied it as a foreign language) for 13 years, so I thought why not find something in English? That's how I discovered AO3. At first I was just a reader, then I found some works, which were too awesome just to keep for myself, so I decided to share them with someone else by translating them!

I had been involved in fantranslation for about two years, when I saw a post about recruiting volunteers. So I got curious and decided to help make the Archive of Our Own easier for non-English-speaking users (I didn't know much about all the other OTW projects back then). Fun fact: originally I wanted to become a translator for my second native language, but that team was full, so I thought why not try to create a team for my first native language! The more I contemplated this idea, the more I grew to like it, because even though fan culture is popular in my country, it's not very common in my native language. Hopefully, what we are doing in our team will change the situation at least slightly.

Is there anything you've worked on that you found challenging or memorable?

Some documents I've translated were quite challenging due to the complexity of language -- I'm not a big expert on financial terms, for instance. But if I were to talk about one particular example, that would be the translation-specific Cheatsheet. Each team has a list of the most common or important terms we come across, which have to have consistent translation (for example, one should translate "OTW" in the same way everywhere). Here I was, a newbie to the OTW AND some of its projects, and some terms from the cheatsheet were unfamiliar and so confusing for me! I was the first one on the team, which made it even more challenging.

Thankfully, I had some help from other teams' members, but I'll never forget that experience! (And it makes me even more grateful for my teammates and our two-beta system now ❤)

What fannish things do you like to do?

Oh, I love being involved with different fannish activities! I enjoy reading fanfics (and translating them; unfortunately, I haven't written anything in a while... ehh, I loved writing some time ago; I wish I could resurrect my inspiration somehow) and comics (I can only admire them, I'm terrible at drawing). I have also tried creating some fan merchandise (not for selling, just for myself)! And of course I'm always exploring new fandoms or re-exploring old ones (when I have free time, which is nearly a non-existent thing at this point, but still).

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Laure, who volunteers in the Translation Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I'm one of the volunteers managing the Translation Committee, and I'm also a French translator! So I get to participate in the organisational and administrative side of things, and I still translate or proofread documents sometimes.

Although many people think that Translation works on fanfic, we don’t translate them (it would be nice but there are so. many. of them!). What we work on is a lot of the information and news content that’s produced by the OTW and its projects — like the FAQs, news posts, and some of the homepages. We’re trying to make it all as accessible as possible to fans who don’t speak English!

At the moment there are more than 250 translators for 45 languages, and it’s been amazing to get to work and chat with people from so many different cultures.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

It really depends on the week, it can vary a lot! We have plenty of different types of tasks, some can be done individually, some require group work, and some are even cross-committee efforts. Most of the time we each decide what we work on, it’s quite flexible, but it also requires a lot of self-determination. That part is difficult for me, so teaming up with colleagues and having their support has helped a lot.

For example, I can have a quiet week where I attend our monthly committee meeting, take minutes for it if it’s my turn to do so, and then change our internal documentation if decisions have been taken. Or I can have a very busy week, with several new documents to prepare for translation; discussing with my colleagues to decide which teams we need to recruit for; taking notes for the annual interviews we hold with almost all our translators; and then beta an urgent translation. And that's to cite only a few things that can happen!

We also have the on-call week, which all the Translation managers do on rotation. It means that every two months or so, I’m the one in charge of replying to emails; assigning documents to translate or beta; helping translators if they have any issues; or other kinds of tasks. I love this part of my role because it’s when I get to interact with other volunteers the most.

It can all get very busy when we have special events going on, like the membership drive, the elections, recruitments or when we organise individual check-ins with the translators -- which I also enjoy a lot. I’m not here only for the chatting I promise!

What made you decide to volunteer?

It happened a bit by chance, to be honest. I'd been reading fics on AO3 for years, but I never really had the time and energy to check what happened behind the scenes. Then last year I saw on the homepage that French translators were needed, and I happened to have time at that moment, so I applied!

I thought it was a good opportunity to give back to AO3 for all the time I spent on the site. I also wanted to translate again. I studied translation but it didn’t become my day job, so it’s really nice to use this skill in a fandom context.

Then another Frenchie encouraged me to apply for the manager role, and the more I learn about how the OTW works, the more I want to discover. It’s a far bigger machine than I imagined, it’s really interesting to see how complex it is.

What has been your biggest challenge doing work for the OTW?

The biggest challenge has been letting go of my bad reflexes from previous jobs. I’ve worked in companies that relied a lot on punishing and guilting employees for mistakes, and it really leaves a lasting impression. It’s also really bad management in my opinion! Guilt doesn’t work as a lasting motivation (and is also bad for your health, don’t do this at home).

So when I arrived in the Translation Committee and I found kind management I was very wary, and it took me some time to de-stress and trust that I wouldn’t be punished for the smallest mistake. It’s human to make mistakes, and when that happens we try to see what went wrong in the process, and how we can help so that it doesn’t happen again. And now that I’m also a volunteer manager, I’m striving to keep that up.

What fannish things do you like to do?

Mostly reading! The amount of reading material on AO3 always blows my mind. I could spend all my time reading (I wish) and never run out of good stories to discover. I’m amazed and very grateful for writers who share their works. And the same for fanart and any fanworks actually, I’m not shutting any enjoyable doors.

Also about that, lately I've had the motivation to start writing again. I haven’t in ages so it’s tough to get it rolling again. I’m going to participate in a mini bang soon to get some motivation!

I also started translating a fanfic from English into French, as I’m hoping to get more French friends to read it. It’s easy to forget that everyone doesn’t read and/or speak English when we’re so often chatting in this language. Translation is still a great and necessary accessibility tool, especially if it’s for accessing Transformers fanfics!

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Anhaita, who volunteers with the Translation Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

As a volunteer, I'm part of the Translation Committee. Our main objective is making the site and its content available in different languages for easy accessibility and understanding to all those whose first language isn't English. We help in cross lingual communications with other Committees as well! (Support and Abuse, for example).

Translation is also subdivided into smaller language teams, so no matter what language you wish to communicate in, we most likely have someone to make sure the message gets interpreted correctly. As the OTW is geared towards fans from various communities and cultures, our goal is to make sure people can access our website in languages they feel comfortable with.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

As I'm part of a very small team (literally, it's just two of us here), we mainly have a large number of documents to sort through and translate. So usually, I spend the week translating a document, perhaps a webpage for the OTW site, like the FAQs or a News post. At times, I may get contacted to help translate a text-image, or fic-tags in my language, for a different Committee -- we are kind of the go-between here!

Translating some words into my language, Marathi, can be pretty tough, and sometimes hilarious even. We have to figure out how sentence structures have to be changed to fit a text, or the closest possible translation is used. Fun fact: Fanvid is literally translated to mean "Western Picture Gallery" in Marathi (because that's a word English totally dreamt up one day and refused to inform the other languages).

On the whole, it's a pretty relaxing workload, and is easily managed side by side with university life (with some good time management skills; seriously, if it's one thing I've learnt as a volunteer, it's that!).

What made you decide to volunteer?

I've always wanted to, I think. On some level, I wanted to give back to the community that has been there for me in little ways, throughout my formative years, providing encouragement and companionship when I needed it. And volunteering for the OTW was a way to do that, to be a part of something that allows fans to have a wholesome and positive environment to exercise their creativity in! It also allowed me to actively support the site that I'd grown so fond of!

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

The sense of community! Seriously, imagine hundreds of people with like minded interests and passion for fannish activities -- it's a wonderful feeling. Another thing I've really enjoyed is taking part in the annual International Fanworks Day celebration -- hosting games and interacting with people who've come to enjoy this site so much. It's lovely to see how this site has brought fans together!

What fannish things do you like to do?

Oh, a myriad of things! I've read, written and even beta-read many fanfictions over the years. I've taken part in and helped organise a couple of fanwork challenges, and I love browsing through the truly wonderful fan art created by artists out there!

But mainly, reading (devouring) fanfiction has become a very integral part of my life. I've officially read more fanfiction than books by now!

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with SimK, who volunteers with the Translation Committee.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I'm a translator, beta and the team coordinator for the Malay language translation team. We translate, among other things, news posts and announcements, as well as support sections for the OTW and AO3 such as the FAQ and Terms of Service. While there's not much fanfiction in Malay on the Archive, it's important that it remain accessible to non-English speakers, or anyone who has an easier time with their native language, especially sections that can help members use the site to their full enjoyment.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

When it comes to translating and beta-ing, I don't really have a set schedule and generally do it after work on weekdays. As a team coordinator I organize team meetings that I try to keep fairly regular, where we discuss terms and some of the more complicated translations we face. We work together to set standard terms in order to maintain consistency throughout our translations, but that isn't always easy. Colloquial Malay, which we use on an everyday basis, can differ very much from standard written Malay, and we often end up with long discussions about exactly how formal or "slangy" we should go.

What made you decide to volunteer?

I'm not living in Malaysia at the moment, and when I saw the recruitment notice I saw it as an excellent opportunity to maintain my command of Malay and to keep in touch with the language, especially living in a country now where almost no one speaks it. I've also been using the Archive almost since its inception; it's only right that I give back to the community that has given me so much joy over the years.

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

Finding out how much work goes on behind the scenes. Most people are familiar with the Archive, but aren't aware of the many other branches that the coexist with it, such as Fanlore, Transformative Works and Cultures, Open Doors and Legal Advocacy. Running all that takes a lot of work and it's just great to be a part of that.

Within the translation team itself, my favourite parts are the post-meeting chats where we talk about some of the stranger phrases we've had to translate, complain about Malay and English language conventions, and reminiscence about our Malaysian education system. Also sometimes just wrangling with a particularly tricky translation can be immensely satisfying. I really enjoy translating legalese, FAQs and any exciting announcements that the OTW and AO3 have to make, such as this year's Hugo Awards News Packet.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I read and write a lot of fanfic, and every now and then try my hand at a fanvid. I joined fandom in the early 2000s (when Geocities was still around!) and haven't left since. Over the years, I've cycled through various fandoms, making a [bad?] habit of arriving slightly too late once most of the excitement has passed. But as it goes in fandom, there's always someone still hanging around, or discovering it at the same time as you are, so it's never dull. I love rarepairs, and in my current fandom I'm trying to nurture a few pairing canoes, alongside the steady tugboat of my OTP.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Lona, who volunteers as a translator.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I am a translator, beta, uploader and team coordinator for the Dutch translation team. This way I help make the OTW just a little bit more accessible to the people out there who don't speak English.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

It sounds like a horrible cliché, but there is no such thing as a typical week. I can however let you know a bit more about the way our team works! It starts with receiving the English news source texts that need translating or checking for errors, depending on whether you’re the translator or beta reader for that specific text.

The source text can be very easy and straightforward, but sometimes you’ll be presented with trickier phrases and terms. If it’s a term or phrase that we suspect will get used more often, we’ll discuss it with the team. The interesting thing here is that the Dutch team is a mix of Dutch and Belgian peeps, so opinions on what translations to use sometimes vary wildly. Especially if it’s between two terms that are both technically correct, but one is more ‘Dutch-Dutch’ and the other is more ‘Belgian-Dutch’. Please don’t ask me about ‘Contacteer’.

As a coordinator we (I and my other teammate, who is also a coordinator) try to make the team run as smoothly as possible. To give one example, this means that we plan meetings to discuss new terms and we add the new terms to our language’s “cheatsheet”, which is like our knowledge base or dictionary.

After new terms have been discussed and decided on, and the texts have been translated and checked, we upload the translated documents to the site for the world to see!

What made you decide to volunteer?

That’s a very uninspiring story, I’m afraid. I was a secretary between jobs in 2015 and bored out of my mind. My husband was out of the country during the week and I desperately needed something to do. Something fun. So of course I turned to fic reading and had recently stumbled on the AO3 where a ‘We’re looking for translators’ post caught my eye. I figured ‘Why the heck not, my English and Dutch skills are both decent and I need something to do anyway’ and applied. That’s when I discovered that I really love translating! So much, in fact, that I made it my career by now.

And of course, after becoming a translator it was only a short and slippery slope to also become a volunteer for the Policy & Abuse Committee. The OTW became my home in a very short time.

What’s the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

The people. As much fun as translating is, it really can’t hold a candle to the awesome and great people that make up the OTW. I have never before met so many open minded and fantastic peeps as here. Quite a few of them are no longer just ‘fellow volunteers’ but actual friends. We watch movies and series together, we write fic for each other and together, we discover new fandoms through and with each other.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I love to read and write. I started out with fanfiction in a paper journal in highschool, writing about DragonBall Z. Then I migrated to Fanfiction.net for my Pirates Of The Caribbean stories before I found my place at the AO3 where I write about DragonAge, Teen Wolf and Mystic Messenger.

I’m also a gamer, so you can probably find me behind my computer with my face plastered to the screen as I’m levelling one of my many World of Warcraft characters. Or discovering that the cake is a lie in Portal. Or going after Darkspawn in DragonAge.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Adi M., who volunteers as a translator.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

Translation helps make the OTW's content accessible to as many people as possible, which is a fundamental part of the organization's vision. I know a lot of people in my country shy away from any English content, whether because they don't feel comfortable reading in English or because they simply don't understand it enough. Knowing my translations help bring people in my country closer to fandom is one of the best parts of the role.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

My team is still fairly new, so there's a lot of content to translate and many terms and protocols to discuss, so there's always work to do! I get my task from Translation staff, usually with a deadline of one week, and as soon as I finish a task there's another one waiting.

I also note down any new term that needs to be discussed, or any question I have for the rest of my team, and when the list gets long enough I contact my team to set a meeting to figure out everything. Some terms can be frustrating, but that's all part of the fun!

What made you decide to volunteer?

I have been in fandom for 7 years now, and have always loved to translate everything I could get my hands on. Joining the OTW as a translator brought two of my favorite things in the world together.

You volunteered this year to be a chat room moderator for International Fanworks Day. What was that like?

It was a great experience for me. I was hesitant to volunteer for it in the beginning, but as the day drew closer I got more excited, and in the end, I am very happy I did it. I had the chance to meet new people I don't share a fandom with, and it was amazing how we still managed to bond over fannish joys and ideas even without liking the same things. When we need volunteers for next year, I'll be signing up!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I (try to) write fics, and I can't manage without reading at least one fic a day. I also love translating fics from English to Hebrew, both to make them more accessible for Hebrew-speaking fans and to practice my translation skills.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Raquel E. who volunteers as a translator.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I’m a beta reader and translator for the OTW European Portuguese team. The Translation Committee focuses on making content accessible to non-English speaking fans; that’s our main goal and includes working on news posts and notices. We also collaborate on work that committees do, such as with AO3 Abuse, Tag Wrangling and Support. We’re a multitasking bunch. I also volunteer for the Support roster and evaluate samples from people who apply to volunteer with the European Portuguese team.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I don’t really have a routine. Is that bad to admit? Our European Portuguese team works very hard to go through the amount of content, and I must say we do it quite nicely. We’re handed tasks as they come, and even though sometimes it’s hard to come together as a group because of our different routines, we get by because we get along well :)

What sorts of OTW content have you worked on?

I’ve worked on all sorts of content, since we translate documents related to every OTW project!

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

For me, it’s how rewarding volunteering is. Not only do I have a blast learning new things while translating all manners of documents -- be it legal, news posts or FAQs -- I also feel happy and fulfilled knowing my small contribution is helping other people by making our content accessible to them. I believe the mission of the OTW is an important one and being part of it is a blessing.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I’m going to be very predictable and go with ‘I read a lot of fanfic’! Even before I volunteered, I was already religiously using AO3 to bookmark my favourite fics. Besides reading it, I also write it sometimes, along with meta (mostly about Mass Effect and Dragon Age). I blog a lot on Tumblr, and I run a fan blog focused on Mass Effect. I also adore beta reading any fanfiction my friends send my way, and I love discussing plot ideas with them. My favourite thing in the world is talking about my favourite videogames and any assorted nerdery I happen to be into.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

The Organization for Transformative Works is the non-profit parent organization of multiple projects including Archive of Our Own, Fanlore, Open Doors, Transformative Works and Cultures, and OTW Legal Advocacy. We are a fan run, entirely donor-supported organization staffed by volunteers. Find out more about us on our website.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Chien, who volunteers as a translator.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

As part of the Chinese translating team I assist in putting together Chinese versions for anything the OTW posts online, from AO3 guidelines to write-ups of amicus briefs. Basically I'm part of the bridge of communication that connects the OTW to the Chinese-speaking fannish community, helping to reach out to more people who might be interested in what we do!

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I joined the OTW right before my last year of high school and now I'm preparing for my UEC certificate exams in October, so generally my week is similar to that of any typical Chinese independent school student -- except I use Google Drive a lot more often! I live in the school dorms too, which (gasp) don't have any WiFi amenities, so I normally make my task for the week available offline and use my smartphone app during the week, then hand it in when I'm home for the weekend to save data charges XD. I also handle the occasional "do you get paid for your work?" from curious dormmates, but overall my work is like a de-stressing pastime for me.

What sorts of OTW content have you worked on?

Other than pages for the AO3 site and legal write-ups, I've done news posts and election manifestos too. I also dip into the Tag Wranglers' chat room to help out with fandom tags. And when I'm 18 in two months I'll apply for Abuse tickets too, because all experience is good experience, no?

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

Fandom tags are really great fun, especially when a familiar series pops up every so often (I was so hyped when the first Chinese tags for Yuri!!! on Ice came in.) It also keeps my mind on its toes as I jump back and forth between two languages, and I've always had a thing for linguistics, haha! Plus I've learned more legal terms in the past year than I have in my entire life, which could be a good conversation starter if I need one.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I made my FanFiction.net account when I was twelve, then moved to AO3 after getting into Free! My Tumblr blog is basically a collection of art reblogs from whatever fandoms I'm into, which could be anything from Steven Universe to Game of Thrones. I occasionally rant about issues in the fandom too, when I'm struck by the fancy. Then there's headcanons with fellow fans too, which may or may not be turned into NSFW fics on AO3.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Ely, who volunteers as a translator.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

The mission of the OTW is to “provide access to and preserve the history of fanworks and fan cultures”; I reckon that, as a volunteer translator, my role fits primarily with the part where we “provide access”.

Even though, in the 21st Century, more and more people use English online, there are still many users who don’t feel confident enough in a language that is not their own. What we do in Translation is try to reach as broad a public as possible by translating content that otherwise would be inaccessible to many.

Knowing that, thanks to our work, people get to feel part of the wonderful community that is the OTW makes it one of the most rewarding jobs I have ever volunteered to do.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

I am part of the Italian Team, which is one of the teams with the highest number of volunteers, and we don’t get new tasks daily since we have completed all the main ones already. Therefore, I don’t think we have a “typical” week, every day varies greatly according to the tasks we’re given. But that doesn’t mean that our week is anything but exciting!

When I am given a new document to translate, I draft a rough rendition of the translation as quickly as possible. Then, I put it away for a day or so before I get back to what I’ve written with a fresh mind and work properly on it. It usually takes me four to five days before I feel confident enough to send it back.

We have a two-beta system and I very much enjoy being the first beta. Being the first beta means that I can point out what I would change but I get to hear what other people think of my changes before anything is set in stone. I love to discuss grammar and stylistic choices with my fellow teammates –- yes, I am that nerdy. The second beta wraps up any comment and marks the doc as “Ready”.

Sometimes, the teams are given new terms whose translations they need to discuss before adding them to each team’s cheat sheet. Everybody writes what they believe would be the most accurate translation and we discuss and vote the terms that are the toughest to find a solution to. Don’t be fooled! This is a hard task that can take days if not weeks.

We also take surveys about our work as volunteers; once a year, we chat privately with our Chairs; we have regular Translation meetings on Slack (that I regularly miss due to personal schedule conflicts!); and when there is a Drive or other time sensitive posts to translate… well! That’s when things get hectic!

What sorts of OTW content have you worked on?

I have worked on all sorts of OTW content: AO3 and OTW FAQs, News posts, Election posts, Abuse and Support messages, Open Doors tutorials, Drives, Video Subtitles, Annual Reports, and the recruitment samples.

My favourite tasks to work on are the Abuse and Support emails, though, because the role of the translator is essential –- not that it usually isn’t -– and, without our mediation, the Abuse and Support volunteers wouldn’t be able to communicate with non-English-speaking users seeking practical help.

Alas! My least favourite tasks are legal documents; I am pants at translating all that technical vocabulary and, when I get one of those, it’s usually accompanied by an apology from our Translation Chairs –- who totally understand and share my grief.

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

Being a language graduate from the University of Venice, and having worked as a freelance translator and interpreter for years, one of the most fun things for me is working on the translations themselves. Some of them are a field day, some others are much more byzantine, but it is always rewarding when the document is finally ready and you know you gave all you have to do a good job. Plus, you get to know about what’s going to happen on the Archive before everyone else (when you have News posts to translate)!

Another fun aspect of my work as a volunteer is to meet other nerdy people that share my passion about fandom, and to chat with them about their fanworks and their own involvement with AO3. I am always interested to see the similarities and differences between other users’ experiences and my own, and I am often surprised to see how much I share even with people that have very different interests from my own.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I like to do all sorts of fannish things! (Who doesn’t?)

Primarily, when I have time, I love to write. I am an author (and have been one for 14 years, now) for the Harry Potter fandom (my one and only fandom), and I love to pen long, plot-driven, multi-chaptered stories about my OTP (Lily Luna Potter/Hugo Weasley). When I feel particularly inspired by a prompt, I participate in the occasional fest on LiveJournal (which usually cross-posts on AO3, nowadays).

I love to read, and I absolutely adore to leave long and detailed feedback that makes other writers and artists squeal in delight. I am also a mod for Crack Broom, a reccing community on LiveJournal, and I love to rec those stories that leave me a gooey mess.

I am artistically impaired, but I am a junkie for fanart, and I always marvel at how good other people are. I commission the occasional drawing, too, just for the pleasure of my eyes and to support those wonderful artists out there.

I take part in-fandom discussions on LiveJournal, read meta-essays, enjoy fandom stats, beta-read Italian fan-fictions, cheerlead my fellow writers when they need help, and study articles on Transformative Works and Cultures. In fact, I used one of the articles from TWC as a source to write my plagiarism essay for my university induction last year.

Fandom is such a big part of my life; the one place where I always come back. It is the beautiful fantasy world that we build all together and where I love to get lost.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Madoc, who volunteers as a translator.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

I’m part of Team Welsh, which is part of the Translation committee. What I do is translate any and all OTW content that is able to be translated to make it accessible to Welsh speakers. This can range from translating the website to translating Abuse and Support messages.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

Normally I wake up, have breakfast and translate for a good few hours before lunch, normally whilst listening to Welsh or Swedish radio. Right now, Team Welsh is going through a review so that more material online can be made available in Welsh, so my mornings are often spent spell-checking and rejigging some previous Welsh translations. Outside the review, the time is normally split between translating and having my nose stuck in a dictionary.

After that, I eat, then focus on my university work, writing notes and going to lectures. My evenings are either filled with dance lessons, choir or doing fannish things like writing fanfiction or knitting a fannish craft. I also find some time to teach myself Swedish!

What sorts of OTW content have you worked on?

Since Team Welsh is a new team and consists entirely of me, not much! I’ve worked mainly on translating the main site of the OTW, but I’m also available to assist with Welsh Abuse and Support queries.

I’m hoping that once Team Welsh gets a little bigger we’ll be able to handle bigger, more time sensitive things like news posts, and also be able to finish translating the main site and expanding to other OTW projects.

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

As much as I love the feeling of contributing to the cause, the most fun thing to do is speaking to other translators. I’m a massive fan of any and all languages, and chatting to other translators is always a barrel of laughs. It also gives us an opportunity to commiserate over how weird English is as a second language -- the mishmash of different word etymologies makes English a very difficult language to learn!

What fannish things do you like to do?

I love to write fanfiction, but more than that I love to worldbuild! Making something robust out of scraps of canon is absolutely my favourite thing to do, be it creating an alien culture from scratch or adopting a minor character and fleshing them out. One of my favourite fanworks involved extending an alien conlang! (I never seem to get enough of languages, it seems!)

I also knit and make fannish toys and other crafts. Currently I’m the very proud owner of Kelas Parmak the Cardassian chameleon, two knitted Newt/Hermann dolls from Pacific Rim, Hedwig the snowy owl, and a yet-to-be finished patchwork blanket with several fannish patches already made for it.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.

Every month or so the OTW will be doing a Q&A with one of its volunteers about their experiences in the organization. The posts express each volunteer's personal views and do not necessarily reflect the views of the OTW or constitute OTW policy. Today's post is with Neru, who volunteers as a translator.

How does what you do as a volunteer fit into what the OTW does?

As a volunteer translator and beta reader, I translate the OTW's content from English to my native language, which is Hungarian; I also proofread my teammates' translations. I translate everything from an Open Doors import announcement to the OTW's Terms of Service. I feel that my work fits into the OTW's vision perfectly, since I'm helping fellow fannish people access content they might not be able to access due to a language barrier. I'm helping to build the bridges between communities that may not have had the opportunity to meet before. This sounds very cheesy, but that's basically what my work helps achieve, at least in my opinion.

What is a typical week like for you as a volunteer?

My week is usually quite chill: depending on when I received a translation or beta task to do, I usually translate or beta read in my free time. I'm also on the news roster, which means that I help with news posts as well. This time of the year is pretty busy in that respect, since we have the International Fanworks Day (IFD) that we translate the posts for. This usually means an extra hour or two added to my work. Besides these two, I also help out with uploading the finished content to its destination, so to AO3 for example, or the OTW's website. This usually adds a few more hours to my workload, but it's completely manageable since the regular uploading I can spread out throughout the month, and it's good to take one last final look at the texts.

What sorts of news content have you worked on?

I have worked on everything that there was to offer! Well, not exactly, we, as in my language team's news translators, don't translate the newsletter (just yet). We do translate Open Doors announcements, International Fanworks Day posts, Drive posts, and Elections content. Last year, we translated the abbreviated version of the OTW's Strategic Plan and the OTW's budget, which were quite the tasks, since I personally am not familiar with the managerial and financial vocabulary these texts required. It was fun looking up the terms though! That's what I like the most about translating, it broadens my knowledge at every turn.

What's the most fun thing to you about volunteering for the OTW?

Well, as I have mentioned above, I love that I can learn about so many new things through translation. Legal, managerial, financial, and all sorts of other specialized vocabulary that I never thought I'd have to look for before. I also love the challenge translation poses, that I have to adapt a text that's rooted in a totally different culture than my own, and I have to make it understandable in my own cultural terms. Keeps me on my toes!

Another aspect I absolutely love about volunteering here is the community. I have got to know so many wonderful people through volunteering for the OTW that brought so many new perspectives into my life, and changed me for the better. I love the awesome community we have. We can talk about literally anything our hearts desire. We can have an hours-long debate about how often you should change your bedsheets! These debates never feel like arguments: to me, they are more like opening windows into different cultures, and getting to see how other people live. Frankly, besides the fact that I love doing what I do, I also love the place I'm at.

What fannish things do you like to do?

I'm more of a consumer than a producer. My fandom tastes vary, but I would say, currently I'm most obsessed with Yuri!!! On Ice and Captive Prince. I do like to write from time to time, though I don't think of myself as a great author or anything. Besides that, I sometimes do podfics from my friend's fanfiction, though these really are just for personal entertainment rather than for sharing with the World Wide Web.

Now that our volunteer’s said five things about what they do, it’s your turn to ask one more thing! Feel free to ask about their work in comments. Or if you'd like, you can check out earlier Five Things posts.