Ever since my very first French class at the age of eleven, I have always loved languages. I am fascinated by the way learning a new language not only allows you to communicate with a completely new group of people, but also provides you with the tools to think in a completely different way and describe or consider concepts your own language wouldn’t allow.

I chose to study at Royal Holloway for a number of reasons: I wanted to experience living in a large city whilst also staying close to the countryside and Royal Holloway’s Surrey location fitted the bill perfectly. In addition, I was looking for a course which combined practical language skills and translation with cultural and historical study. The BA Joint Honours in Italian and Spanish did both.

I had never been to Italy and didn’t know a word of Italian before I started the course, but the intensive ab initio course, run solely by native Italian speakers, soon had us all at A level standard in just under a year. The obligatory year abroad forced us to take our language skills to another level by securing ourselves university placements in Italy, Spain and Latin America. Having only studied Italian for forty weeks, searching for accommodation was somewhat challenging. At the time it seemed very annoying that the university didn’t have more of a support network for accommodation. However, looking back I understand why we were set such a challenge, it truly forced us to learn quickly – if we hadn’t we would have been homeless!

Unfortunately, the translation course organised by the Spanish department was only run for native Spanish speakers, which was disappointing. However, the translation course run by the Italian department was more open and thoroughly enjoyable. Although, as an Account Manager for The Translation People I rarely see the political commentary, literary or newspaper articles, which we translated on the course, being requested for translation, the documents we did translate covered a multitude of subjects and were carefully chosen. Perhaps it was my enjoyment of this course which inspired me to contact The Translation People to request a work placement back in 2006. Although the course wasn’t particularly work focussed it did provide me with a good working knowledge of Italian and Spanish and the cultural history relating to those languages.