Sophie completes her internship with the Translation People

As a student in my first year of a Masters in multilingual translation (specialising in English and Spanish) at the University Charles de Gaulle in Lille, France, I was keen to experience translation in a professional environment. Consequently, I was delighted to be able to join The Translation People’s Birmingham team for a two month internship. Furthermore, I spent the third year of my degree specialising in Applied Foreign Languages in English and Spanish at the University of Wolverhampton, where I studied as an exchange student – I was excited to be able to return to the West Midlands, as it is now a familiar region to me.

This internship was an opportunity to strengthen my translation and communication skills, along with being introduced to project management. I developed my competences in these areas by proofreading various translations, formatting documents, translating blog articles from the company website, establishing purchase orders for clients and conducting telephone recruitment interviews.

All of the Account Managers were very happy to explain every aspect of their profession to me and they really made me feel like a part of the team. I was really lucky to have the opportunity to work as a professional, using the latest software in translation and project management such as SDL Trados 2009 and Worx.

This professional experience enabled me to see how varied and challenging the work of an Accounts Manager can be, with a constant flow of new projects coming in everyday, each from different clients located all around the world. These clients were requesting translations which were all based in very different areas, such as: marketing, advertising, law and science. As a result of my internship, I am now considering project management as a future career, an option that I had not had in mind before.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time with The Translation People as the team were always supportive, helpful and patient when it came to answering my questions. I would recommend The Translation People to anyone who is considering translation or account management as a future profession, as it is a brilliant way to benefit from real professional training and to develop the essential skills required to work in this area.

Sophie Gibrat