Esther Gimeno-Miró
Linguistic Services Provider
ABOUT ME
Why English?
I am used to being asked where I am from, as most people do not relate my accent to Spain and are curious about why and how that happened. When I state I am Spanish, I get a lot of comments suggesting my parents are native speakers of English. Well, here you are an explanation to the "mystery".
I was born in Pamplona in 1982, daughter to a Catalan mother and an Aragonese father (i.e. both Spanish). My family early moved from there and I ended up attending a British Kindergarten in Valencia and an American Pre-school in Barcelona (both in Spain), where I leaned how to read and write in English before I did in Spanish.
Soft Skills
Creative
Analytical
Intuitive
Empathetic
Observing
Collaborative
Adaptable
Dynamic
Curious
Eye for detail
Ear for detail
Why teaching?
Being literate in English and not recognising Spanish writing caused me a lot of distress later on when I started attending a Spanish school that did not know what to do with me. On one hand, I had skills enough for me to skip a year in Spanish Primary School. On the other hand, I'd try to read Spanish as if it were English, so I couldn't understand what was written in any book. After trying several measures for which I would attend classes of both my year and a more advanced level, my school decided it was better for me to stick to the lowest level and start from scratch with my Spanish literacy.
This measure ended up being enough for me except for the ESL (English as a Second Language) lessons, where I was not allowed to participate and I would fail my English exams because my answers were not present in some lists of vocabulary or verbs that we were supposed to memorize. I guess you may understand now that my inclinations towards teaching, particularly ESL, are no random choice... I like to believe that some part of me has always dreamt of making sure no other kid needs to go through any similar situation.
Nat. Languages
Spanish (native)
English (proficient - C2)
German (elementary - A1)
Catalan (pre-intermediate - A2)
Countries visited
Developing my skills
I have a younger brother who would always struggle to pass his exams when he was little even though he was really creative. Nowadays, there are many names to describe different learning difficulties and there are many ways in which teachers can adapt their methodologies so that they are more inclusive. However, terms such as ADHD or bullying had never been heard in Spain at the time, nor had any of their consequences in early childhood.
Both empathy and patience, together with some analytic and interpretational skills, make me good at foreseeing "a priori" difficulties of people when it comes to facing different learning methods or approaches to giving instructions. Thus, I am able to adapt my methods and language to people's needs.
France​
Germany
Italy
Nepal
Spain
Portugal
Republic of Maldives
Romania
UK
USA
First work experience
After spending most of my childhood trying to help my little brother with his studies, I started tutoring friends and neighbours at the age of 15, helping them with their homework and their English skills -which was a major need in the area. This experience let me discover how much I like teaching and learning, but also helped me face the challenge of describing a language that was completely intuitive to me in a way in which I could explain its mechanisms and rules to other people. By doing this, that I realised I enjoy translating the holistic and organic entity we call language into sets of rules that are easier to learn and apply.
Lifechanging experience
This section may be too personal and sensitive, but I am also a storyteller and a script writer, so I am very aware of the fact that 'too personal' is precisely what makes us real. If you're just interested in my CV or professional experience, you can just skip this part.
When I was 17, a former boyfriend of mine and his friends gang-raped me. After that, as they were neighbours of mine, they bullied me for months so that I was frightened and didn't report them to the police.
I still regret not having protected other girls from what happened to me or worse, as I learned afterwards that I wasn't the first girl these guys had assaulted. The truth is that I just couldn't do much. Their strategy worked with me: from direct threats, cutting and burning my clothes, stealing my money or my highschool books and class notes, to even to spreading rumours about what kind of a slut I was. I got lifted grabbed by the neck, kicked in the stomach, and dumped in dumpsters, photographed while being humiliated, and they even tried blackmailing me.
All this really changed my life for good. I went into a 4-year severe depression even though I started a long-term therapy. However, I lost access to my intelligence, my academic skills, my ability to concentrate, and my interest in living.
I wish this had never ever happened, but it did, and if anyone is really interested in my skills, reading "resilient" on some skills list will never show you how resilient I am or how much I worked to get to University.
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Why computers?
When I was little, my mother got very fond on us learning how to use computers. I still remember the 5.25in floppy disks and changing my writing machine for a keyboard... When faced with having to choose a degree, I chose Computer Science not knowing very well what I was getting myself into. I just wanted to mix language and mathematics in a degree, and thought this was my best chance.
Even though I didn't finish my degree, I must say that I grew true interest in technology -especially AI- during my time studying CS and I made good friends that I keep up to this day. To me, technology became a personal way to get some freedom, to break limits and, why not admitting it, to escape.
Changing gears...
However, on the second year of my BS in Computer Science, I was studying for my subject in Microprocessing when I came across the name of Noam Chomsky. I started researching on what Dr. Chomsky was related to and I found REALLY interesting projects and ideas. This is how I got in touch with Generative Linguistics and how I just fell in LOVE with it.
There were no specific degrees in Linguistics in Madrid at the time and the only way to approach Linguistics was through a degree called Licenciatura en Filología. This degree used to -it doesn't exist anymore- combine studies on Linguistics, Translation, Literature, and Teaching English as a Second Language.
Honestly, although I used to read anything that came into my hands as a kid (including encyclopaedias and books on the life of animals), I was afraid I would end up hating the degree because of all the literature I would need to read. I felt as if I was incapable of reading for fun -as if I could only "study" books rather than just reading them-, so I thought I would never make a good literature student and I didn't feel confident to make the change happen.
Studying & working
Of course, I got the famous father-talk most Arts students end up having about the fact that I was making a terrible mistake; that I was throwing away my future; that my only option as a job would be being surrounded by misbehaving "germ bombs" -my father's way to talk about kids :P- and dirty, stinky nappies; that there was no way back to a "real" degree, and that I would regret this decision for the rest of my life. You know, after a talk like that, you really need to prove that you are a grown-up who owns her decisions and is ready to work on them so that they lead her somewhere decent. Hence, I started working part time at a real estate in the mornings in order to earn some independence and learn about "real-life jobs".
Before finishing my degree, I had dropped my job at the real estate and started teaching English and Spanish from 3 to 83-year-olds at a language school. However, some years later I ended-up teaching Spanish at Austin College (US, TX) with a Fulbright FLTA scholarship, which opened doors for me to be recruited by the US Department of State to participate in a humanitarian teaching program in Spain. Moreover, I got to become an official ESOL Cambridge Speaking Examiner and to teach English to Spanish Air-Force officers, Deputy Secretaries at Spanish Ministries, Executive Assistants at AENA (organism that manages civil airports in Spain), and judges at the Spanish Constitutional Court.
Finally...
Linguistics
Even though I didn't enjoy my first year in Filología Inglesa that much because almost everything was literature, I got to discover I could have pretty good grades; way better, in fact, than my previous experience in CS. Luckily for me, Linguistics finally showed up as a thing on my second year at a general Linguistics course, so I could start seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.
I needed to hang on to it so badly that I contacted my former university classmates that very same year in order to see if we could collaborate on a project. I talked to several Professors and I found out there was an abandoned project on which CS students at UPSAM had been working for several years on EAGLES morphs-syntactic tag-set. After proposing a collaboration between the two universities, UPSAM gave me all the material they had and permission to take over the whole project. For this reason, I gathered a research group and got Dr. Zamorano Mansilla as a supervisor of a project we called: Swan Project.
The Linguistics Department in English Studies at UCM was systemic-functionalist, so I learned about what I had at hand -which I ended up liking very much- and had to look for opportunities to take courses oriented to Generativism, Natural Language Processing, and Artificial Intelligence through the Logics Department in the Philosophy Faculty.
NB: Yes, that was another charm of the Spanish educational system at the time; if you were studying a BA, you were banned from BS subjects and were offered 'History of Numbers' if you wanted to take any subject from the Mathematics Faculty -even if you had been a BS student in previous years.
Good thing for me is that throughout my degree I ended up learning that I do enjoy poetry and drama, I can read certain novellas with interest, that I feel truly intrigued by metaphors, and that I find certain adjectives amusing. Moreover, we kept the work going on linguistics projects for 4 years, focusing on very different aspects of language and ended up working on a project led by Dr. Zamorano for which we helped him develop an ontology for an Automatic Language Generator called KPML developed by the University of Bremen.
What's a 'Licenciatura'?
In the end, it took me 6 years as a part-time student -remember I was working at a real estate while studying?- to hold a BA (Hons) in English Studies with a double major in Theoretical and Applied Linguistics (2009). The timeline may be confusing to any university worldwide because English Studies in Spain were something called Licenciatura at the time. FYI, a Licenciatura was a 5-year degree that is nowadays considered to be equivalent to a BA+MA.
Computational Linguistics
After coming back from my Fulbright experience in Texas and keeping 3 jobs at a time as a language instructor, I started looking for opportunities in Computational Linguistics as a 4th job. This is how I learned about the existence of Appen and got involved in one of their projects for Amazon training their NLU for queries. Then, I applied for a job opportunity and it happened to be for Google, where I ended up working as a vendor for half a year on Google Assistant. It was a great experience and I learned a lot about teamwork, project management, documentation, and a lot of tasks involved in NLU, ASR, and NLG.
While working for Google, I was contacted by Samsung Electronics. They offered me a very interesting opportunity as a vendor starting their whole project of Spanish Bixby. We were 5 linguists and 3 PMs at the beginning, and I got to witness how the team grew up to 50 people and how decisions were made along the way. It would have been a great experience had it not been for the long wait at the beginning, as there were problems with our contracts and we were told we would start work 1 month before we really did. The distress derived from not knowing when I would be able to count on a salary after having signed a contract plus getting the date postponed every 3 days for a whole month... triggered me in ways I thought I had already overcome. Moreover, once I started, I suffered moving in the team and nobody did anything about it for months. It took me a long time to recover, but I must say that I learned a lot about myself and about the job. I worked with an incredible team of engineers in the ASR of the Spanish voicebot, I was in full charge of the G2P and I helped automatising my tasks before leaving.
Now, I'm working for Apple on the HomePod Project in Barcelona. I'm debugging Siri and learning a lot about all the tasks involved in ASR, TTS, their trainings, and where each fix should take place. The best part of this job is definitely my team.
Interests and
hobbies
Apart from being genuinely interested in linguistics, teaching, and translation, I also feel attracted to new technologies. We are going through a time of so much technological creativity that I find it impossible to be updated in depth on all the new applications and possibilities these technologies have to offer. However, it is fantastic to get to see a little bit of all the new doors that are getting opened and imagine new applications for these new lines of work, both from a socio-economic and technical point of view, and from a philosophical, legal, and moral side.
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Regarding my hobbies, I am a very creative person, so I always try to find time to develop my artistic skills by singing -particularly jazz and blues- or taking pictures -especially candid portraits besides fine art and conceptual photography. In addition, I have a hand for drawing and illustrating and an eye for storytelling, which I develop by writing plays and scripts.
All of these have helped me develop an eye and ear for detail and the ability to think out of the box.
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