Back to School: Professionalisation Talk at the University of Leeds

During my MA degree in Conference Interpreting and Translation Studies (2015-2016), the University of Leeds frequently organised professionalisation talks for the MA cohort, inviting experts from the translation and interpreting industry, translators from the main international organisations, PMs, and freelancers to share their experience and give students advice on how to start out in the industry. During the MA, I was part of the team of reporters who wrote short summaries of these talks that were then published on the university website. These professionalisation talks were crucial in giving me a concrete overview of the industry from a practical point of view and always provided tips and new ideas for my career.

Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of delivering a professionalisation talk at the University of Leeds on my current job as a translator at the Council of the European Union. I felt that everything had come full circle. During the first part of my presentation, I had the chance to outline the main differences between the European Council and the Council of the EU, explaining that the European Council is made up of presidents and heads of government who work together in order to set the EU's main political agenda, while the Council of the EU (made up of ministers from EU member states) deals with the nitty-gritty negotiations and votes on legislation. This general overview was crucial in order to set the scene for the main part of my talk: an introduction to the Council's Translation Service (LING).

The Translation Service has 24 language units, each with around 24 translators, who are joined by assistants, coordinators, human resources managers, and quality controllers. I tried to give the students an overview of LING's workflow, explaining how a translation project progresses within LING, from the client request stage, to local coordination, pre-processing, translation, revision, and finalisation. I believe it is important for students to understand from the very beginning of their MAs that translation involves a variety of steps, tasks, and competences, aside from translation per se, in order to have a global view of how things work and how your job fits in the bigger picture.

One of the main messages I tried to get across with my presentation is that one of the advantages of working for a big organisation or institution is that quality is of upmost importance, and the institutional framework actually gives you the correct set of tools in order to achieve that. In fact, at the Council, each unit has dedicated terminologists, a quality controller, translators specialising in specific topics and domains, as well as networks dealing with interinstitutional cooperation. This way, translators have a sort of support network and a pool of resources that will help them ensure quality and consistency.

Speaking of consistency, that was another aspect that I highlighted during my presentation: at the Council, we deal with legislation that gets implemented in member states, so terminological consistency and accuracy are essential for the proper functioning of EU legislation, and translators must always bear that in mind. While legislation forms the main bulk of our translation work, the actual content of our projects is varied, ranging from agriculture and fisheries, defence, foreign affairs, environment, etc. In recent years, web translation as well as audiovisual content have become more and more important, and that is a skill that current students might consider developing.

Finally, I encouraged the students to apply for translation traineeships at the Council or at the other EU institutions offering this opportunity, and to keep an eye out for employment opportunities and competitions for permanent translation positions on the EPSO careers website. An EU experience can be incredibly enriching for a translator's career, but perhaps most importantly I truly believe that it has intrinsic value for EU citizens, as it allows you to understand what the EU does and how it works for citizens and with citizens. That is why I think that having the opportunity to develop your translation skills and enhance your CV while also ensuring that multilingualism is respected at an EU level is rewarding both professionally and personally.

My main goal for this talk was to pass on my enthusiasm for my job and to make current Leeds students curious or inspired to apply for a translation traineeship at the Council of the EU. What was also interesting from my perspective was to hear their questions, ranging from finding a specialisation, joining a professional organisation, language combinations, and the role of English post-Brexit. In fact, unsurprisingly, the main question was linked to the impact of Brexit on UK citizens aiming for a career at the institutions (as far as traineeships at the Council are concerned, more information is available here). Overall, this "Back to School" presentation was a great experience for me, as it made me reflect on my job in more abstract terms, and put my day-to-day work in a wider context, while seeing a new generation of Leeds students. I hope I will soon see many of them in Brussels along the corridors of the Council.