Drawing on my recent experience as a trainee in the English department of the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Translation, I will give an overview of the work translators do at the Commission. I will explain what types of texts are translated between which languages and how this relates to the EU’s language policy. The talk will also cover how the translators are organised, what skills they require, what tasks they perform other than translation and what role computer-aided translation and machine translation play. By the end it will be clear why the English department is considered unique within the Directorate-General, and what I perceive to be the challenges and perks of the job will also be revealed. I will also briefly outline the application processes for traineeships and temporary and permanent jobs at the Commission and other EU institutions.

Oscar Hughes is a Brit who studied languages, linguistics and translation from 2013 to 2018 at Cambridge in the UK with one semester abroad in Rome and another in Berlin and then went on to complete a five-month translation traineeship at the European Commission. He is currently still working as a (paid) intern doing translation, terminology and editing at the Swiss Federal Chancellery. He speaks several Germanic, Romance and Slavonic languages and managed to translate successfully from ten languages at the European Commission.

This video was recorded at the Polyglot Gathering in Bratislava 2019 by BTS Group ([ Ссылка ] [ Ссылка ]).

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