Loubna Bilali

Loubna Bilali is a PhD candidate in Translation Studies at Kent State University. She holds Master's degrees in Translation (French-English) from Kent State and in Cross Cultural Communications and Translation Studies from Chouaib Doukkali University in Morocco, where she also completed her undergraduate studies in English Linguistics. Recent translation projects and collaborations include a collection of poetry written by Arab-American and Moroccan poets, the latter of which was published by Poetry International Web. She translated Arabic Hip Hop songs for ArteEast’s special issue of Shahadat's Exploring Popular Literature Series 2012 featuring songs by Middle Eastern artists. Most recently, she worked as the lead linguist in a project aiming at localizing a supply and maintenance software product from English into Arabic where she worked on the terminology development, QA and QC processes.

As part of her graduate fellowships, Loubna is responsible for teaching Master level translation technology courses and undergrad-level elementary and intermediate language courses in Arabic and French. She is also an Arabic instructor for the Regents STARTALK Foreign Language Academy, an intensive immersion program designed to develop students' language proficiency to an advanced level. Loubna’s research interests are varied, including localization, terminology management, corpus-based research, and audiovisual translation which is reflected in her final theses for her graduate degrees. These titles include "The Arabic Subtitling of Swearwords in American Movies," and "Timeless Time and Expense: A Case Study in Software Localization." The latter was a software localization project into French. A lifelong learner, Loubna actively seeks ways to assess the localization of websites and computer applications into Arabic, and how to improve these processes.