Visit to the European Commission in Brussels

During our bachelor, we have many opportunities to attend extra lectures, workshops and events. These are often hosted by very interesting people with connections to either Brazil specifically or at least some part of the Portuguese diaspora. This spring we had a lecture by Bo Skovsboell, who works for the European Commission in Brussels, Belgium. One of Brazilian Studies’ 3rd semester students, our very own Juul Van de Voort, contacted him to arrange an excursion to visit him at the Danish Translation Service in Brussels. In the end, a one-day internship at the European Commission was set up. This trip took place late November, and was attended by Juul, Tanja and yours truly.   
  
Our trip began early Monday morning, which allowed us to spend the entire afternoon as tourists in the most politically important city in Europe. We stayed at an apartment rented through Airbnb, which was conveniently close to the European Parliament. Unfortunately, there was some miscommunication with our Airbnb host about which location we should go to, so we ended up arriving at the Parliament half an hour too late! Awkward!

When we finally arrived, we had to sign in and show ID to gain access to the upper floors. We were greeted by Bo, who kindly forgave us for being late and promptly took us to his office to introduce us to his colleagues. We were then invited to talk to the man in charge of all Danish Translation related to EU matters, Derrick Kinch Olesen, who gave us a detailed lesson on the history of the service and what they do in Brussels. We were then each assigned a professional translator, whom we were allowed to “shadow” for the day. They told us about the different type of work that they each do, and how they got into the field. We were shown some of the electronic tools that they have in order to efficiently translate as much material as possible in dozens of different areas, as well as have they utilize their language skills to interact with translators from other countries.

The man whom I shadowed spoke several languages and was prone to look up an assignment in the system (it is protocol to translate certain press-releases or documents into all EU languages), where he could see the progress of the assignment by the other countries. This way he could look at the German or French for example, and compare certain choices of words or sentence structure, in order to make everything more coherent.                     
    

 All in all it was a very informative and educational experience, and I highly recommend that other students from an Area Study consider making such an arrangement with the Translation Service, or with another institution within the EU. We were certainly very happy with the outcome of the trip, and encourage others to seek out these experiences that transcend the academic world: they are invaluable, and they are tons of fun!

Written by Isabella Vestergaard Guldager 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dinner at the Ambassador of Portugal’s Residency in Copenhagen

Image
On Monday 18 April professors Fernanda Gláucia Pinto and Georg Fischer along with students Juul van de Voort (BA) and Peter Haldborg (MA) had the pleasure of attending a dinner-buffet at the  residence  of the ambassador of Portugal, Rui Macieira ’s residency. The occasion was the visit of professor Ricardo Reis , associate dean for International Affairs of Universidade Católica de Lisboa. After a three-and-a-half hour journey from Aarhus to Copenhagen, a few cups of coffee and a beer, and finally a trip to Charlottenlund, we arrived at Rui Macieira’s residence where we were greeted by the ambassador himself. Shortly after, he thanked everyone for their participation in his welcome speech, soon followed by a short speech by professor Reis – both in European Portuguese, obviously. After the speeches it was time to enjoy the delicious food! Moments after the dinner was served people were flocking around the buffet, enjoying a mixture of Danish and Portuguese delicaci...
Read more

Porto-trip

Image
In the last week of January the 1st semester - soon to be 2nd - students were able to take a break from the stress and misery revolving their exams… Next stop: Portugal! It was a long journey to Porto, but we remained positive throughout the trip, singing joyfully along the way,  and when we finally arrived we were really psyched to get to experience the city! The first day there we were lucky enough to be given 15 degrees and sunshine, which disappointed one of the students who only brought a thick fur coat - the rest of us didn’t complain though! We went for a walk around the city, sat in the sun, drank beer and the mood was at its highest! From Monday to Friday we were given Portuguese lessons by The University of Porto, guided tours around the city and even went for a wine-tasting class, which was very interesting. And tasty... When we were not at the university, we spend our days shopping and experimenting with eating Portuguese snacks like Francesinha and Pastel de Nat...
Read more

New challenges

A new semester has just begun and along comes a whole new set of challenges, especially for the  4 th  semester students as they are off to Brazil. Back in Denmark on 2 nd semester things are humming since new and more intense courses are scheduled. One of them is a course in phonetics and phonology which is a different discipline to most of the students.  As an introduction to the course we have a visiting lecturer, Denise Kluge, from Universidade Federal do Paraná, Brazil.  During the first lesson she taught the importance of making our Portuguese intelligible as a result of correct pronunciation. She states that the context will not always compensate for your lacks, and even if the receiver is able to understand the meaning of your statement he or she might not be willing to compromise with it.  Pronunciation and the production of sound are therefore extremely important even at our level of education. Not least it is essential to base it on the ...
Read more