Yoast Care fund: An interview with Alice Orrù

This week we’d love you to meet another recipient of our Care fund: Alice Orrù, who is nominated by Stefano Cassone. As one of the GTE’s (General Translation Editors) of the Italian WordPress community, she does a lot of translating with a focus on using inclusive language. But she also speaks at lots of events and mentors people who are new to the community. “I could not have a better mentor than her”, is how nominator Stefano puts it. Let’s get to know this contributor a bit better!

Let’s meet Alice Orrù

We’d love to get to know Alice better and hear about the different contributions to the WordPress community. So let’s ask her some questions:

Alice, could you tell us more about what you do?

I’m a freelance web copywriter and technical translator. I write content for websites, technical documentation and marketing campaigns. But I also translate it from English to Italian, my mother tongue. A large part of my work also focuses on the study and application of inclusive language in web writing.

As a volunteer within the WordPress community, I’m a member of the Polyglots group – the people who help localize WordPress core, themes, and plugins in their languages.

When did you start contributing?

I started using WordPress about ten years ago as a blogger. Several years later, around 2015, I discovered that the WordPress ecosystem was much bigger than I imagined. As I started working for a company focused on the WordPress market, WP Media, I found the community behind WordPress and its events: WordCamps and Meetups.

My first concrete contribution to the community started in 2016 when I met the Italian WordPress community at the Contributor Day during WordCamp Milan 2016. There I met many welcoming people who asked me what I thought I could contribute to. As someone who has always loved working with languages, I had no doubts: translations! And so I joined the Polyglots group.

What did you work on?

Since that first Contributor Day in Milan, I have become more and more involved in the Polyglots team’s work. Translations are my thing! Laura Sacco, one of the people to whom the Italian WordPress community owes the most and now part of the Yoast team, encouraged me to take on more responsibility in the community.

I started as a PTE; I was responsible for translations of specific WordPress themes and plugins. Then, I became a GTE, with a broader role that includes permissions to appoint new PTEs and approve translations of anyone who translates WordPress in Italian. Together with other people in the group, I was also responsible for drafting guidelines for our community and mentoring anyone who wants to start working with Italian WordPress translations.

Who is your WordPress mentor?

I’ve already revealed her name in my previous answer ;) My mentor is Laura Sacco. I owe her a lot: she is the first person who gave me confidence within the community, and because of her, I became so passionate about the work Polyglots do for WordPress.

Today I can proudly say that our Polyglots team has grown a lot; over the years, we all worked on countless improvements to make community life more organized and inclusive. So let me take this opportunity to give a virtual round of applause to them all!

Where can people find you these days?

I love WordCamps and try to attend those closest to me, both in Italy and Spain (where I live). But now that all the in-person events have been suspended, I feel quite nostalgic. Although it’s not the same, I try to compensate with online events (I’ve recently spoken at WordCamp Italia), social media, especially Twitter and LinkedIn, the WordPress community on Slack, and my professional blog.

Thanks for answering our questions and for your contributions to the community, Alice. We’re really happy to have you! If you’re reading this and know someone that our community can’t do without, make sure to nominate them for our Care fund. They will get an interview and a gift of $500 as a well deserved thank you for their work. Go to our Yoast Care page to nominate someone right now!