Presentation of the internship
I am currently ending my first year Master's in International
Business and Foreign Languages (English-Spanish) and this internship which is a
compulsory part of my degree was an opportunity for me to improve on my
professional experience. With more and more people doing internships, employers
expect to see them listed on the résumés of potential employees.
Internships allow to develop professional skills and acquire knowledge in
addition to formal degree courses. Internships are an excellent way to enhance
the quality of the résumé and to differentiate oneself against
other applicants.
Corporate life is not the same as life in a student
environment. Internships enable to discover the working atmosphere and
different corporate cultures. When you carry out an internship you get to work
with various people, you should take advantage of it to broaden your network
and personal experience. It was my intention to become fully integrated in
corporate life and to provide professional and effective work. In addition, I
was willing to adapt to a new environment and new situations as well as the
requirements and working methods of an international firm.
During this two month internship, I have been able to put into
practice the knowledge I acquired during my studies and my work experience.
What is more, as I have no concrete idea of my professional
life plan yet, this internship was an opportunity to have an experience in a
new field. To carry out different tasks and functions is an effective way to
find out what is made for you or ,conversely, what is not.
It was no easy task to find my internship this year. I was really
willing to do it abroad, and especially in such an active and vibrant city as
London where I had been doing an
Erasmus exchange throughout the academic year. My objective
was to improve my level of English and in particular to discover English
corporate life and culture. Unfortunately, it was difficult, if not impossible,
to find offers for internships in that region. After several months, I started
sending résumés to big international French companies without
conviction. It was a huge chance for me when Autajon Group, one of the biggest
companies in my region, called me back for an interview.
My missions
In the course of my two month internship, I carried out different
missions.
At the beginning, the main mission the company was hiring me
for was the translation of the new Human Resources website.
Thus, I was based in the headquarters in the HR department where I carried out
a completely separate function in relation to other employees there, as a
translator.
The HR team put the raw text at my disposal. Text they had
been working on for several months and that was validated by the HR manager.
Translating a website consists in translating the text first and then
integrating texts into the internet `page' through a website management
software.
The company needed the translation into three languages:
English, Spanish and German. I am almost fluent in those three languages and
specialised in the study of foreign languages, so the company was very soon
convinced that my knowledge would come up to their expectations. As a LEA
student, I have a good grounding in translation and grammar in English and
Spanish. Regarding German, I know the language from my mother who was born in
Germany.
So I translated the three versions of the website within one
month. Each time I finished a translation, I was asked to send my work to the
HR site manager of the
corresponding subsidiary (to the USA, Spain and Germany) for
him to do a little checking as a precaution. This took a lot of time and I had
to wait for their answer to start integrating texts into the final website.
Once I had finished my initial mission, my managers (and
sometimes managers from other departments) gave me little documents to
translate such as internal notices, training programmes etc.... These
contained very technical terms relative to the company's activity (labels and
cardboard packaging manufacturing) which enabled me to deepen my vocabulary and
my translation technique.
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