Interview with Mara Souder

Mara was born and raised in Germany. It’s where she went to medical school, became a doctor, worked at a university hospital, and specialized in internal medicine and nephrology, which focuses on kidney diseases. This was her career and what she wanted to do with her life.

Then she met the American man who would eventually become her husband. He was in the military, and, for Souder, their relationship meant she would need to relocate across the Atlantic.

Soon, she found herself leaving her position as a doctor and moving to North Carolina, where she subsequently had two little girls, both now under the age of five. And as is true of so many professionals who immigrate, her qualifications weren’t formally recognized by her adopted country. So, she had a mass of medical knowledge, training, and expertise that she wasn’t able to use because she wasn’t licenced in the country where she lived.

Until she found Exfluency.

“I just wanted to use my mind a little bit,” says Souder. “That’s how I stumbled upon Exfluency. I am not a linguist, but I do have subject matter expertise from working in the medical field for a long time, so I thought it would be a good fit.”

Souder had originally investigated other professional avenues in the medical field, but found they weren’t a fit for the work she liked to do.

“I was looking into becoming a medical writer, something that I could do from home with flexible hours,” she says. “But I realized that medical writing is not really my thing. I’m not a very creative person, so I don’t like to create texts. It’s more that I like to dig into finding mistakes or just improving texts – working with something that’s already there.”

As part of Exfluency’s community production process, Souder now works as an Enhancer, using her expertise to improve the technical and medical aspect of texts. She works from an initial AI translation and then her draft of a text goes to a Trust Miner, who applies their linguistic expertise to further improve it.

Being such a critical part of the Exfluency process is particularly interesting to Souder.

“What I really like in Exfluency is this mix of the linguists and the subject matter experts because I do believe you need both. I can spot many grammatical errors, but I’m not a linguist. That’s not my thing. But I can fix errors in language when the first translation is given to me. I often find that I read something and think ‘we don’t say it like this.’ And I can fix that.”

While much of Souder’s time has necessarily shifted towards taking care of her family, she has done a considerable amount of work with Exfluency since she started work in early 2022. And while she may eventually return to practicing medicine, for now her work as an Enhancer is her primary professional focus.

“For me, for this place that I’m at in my life right now, Exfluency keeps me busy. It’s perfect because I can just work whenever I have time. I can choose how much I work and when I get it done.”