As someone who has built language archives, and spent a lot of time poking around in archives built by other people, I appreciate the importance of well-structured meta-data. It’s good meta-data that tells you what is in the giant pile of data you’re working with, making the whole process much less of a needle-in-a-haystack scenario. Mallory Manley is doing the important work of managing data across multiple languages in the field of genealogy. I appreciate Mallory’s honesty about the challenges of stepping sideways out of linguistics, and sharing that experience with us in this interview. You can follow Mallory on Twitter (@ManleyMallory).
What did you study at university?
I
studied a Master of Arts in Linguistics at the University of Essex. My
favorite subject in linguistics is morphology, so I continue to study it
on my own.
What is your job?
I
work for a genealogy company as a cataloguer. I receive digital copies
of historical records and I organize them by place, record type (birth
certificates, census records, etc), and year to prepare them to be
published online. I am responsible for records coming from Scandinavia
and South Eastern Europe.
How does your linguistics training help you in your job?
When
I applied for this job, I had no working knowledge of the Scandinavian
languages or the languages of Eastern Europe, except for Russian. I
definitely oversold my abilities by stating in my cover letter that I
could learn any language. But knowing how to analyse language has helped
me learn these languages. And being able to identify patterns in
language helps me read those documents when I get stuck on words I don’t
know or simply can’t decipher. Learning the orthographies of each of
these languages has also proved to be a challenge, partly because
orthographies change over time, and partly because many of these
languages didn’t have a standardized orthography at all until relatively
recently. So even though I don’t use my linguistics training as much as
I hoped I would in a career, it has helped me succeed in this role.
Do you have any advice do you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?
I
think when we’re young and planning for our future, we get specific
ideas about how our career path will look, and it becomes the only path
we envision. I had to learn to be flexible and accept changes. My first
year of college, I wanted to be a lexicographer (which I still think
would be an awesome job). I ended up instead building a career in
genealogy, and though it’s not where I expected or planned to be, it has
been fulfilling and joyful.
