Translation Internship Program – UK (My experience):
Luckily, I was given the opportunity with Absolute Interpreting and Translations for their Translation Internship Program in the UK and I was able to translate all kinds of documents from German into English or the other way around. After finishing the translation of any document, I would give it to a proof reader to revise and thus I had a great chance to receive feedbacks from professional translators and compare my translations with their revised versions and consequently learn from my mistakes.
Before I started my internship at Absolute Interpreting & Translations I took elective courses in “Practice Translation II” in both ways English <> German as well as “Legal Translation”. Therefore, I learnt how to translate not just the agency’s website, but also many assignments between German and English. Translating a so-called “Polizeiliches Führungszeugnis”, which is basically a “CBR-Check” or “Certificate of No Criminal Records” in English speaking countries is a tough task, because it contains lots of complex sentences with a predefined structure in both languages. Besides that, there are different versions of these types of documents, which prevents the use of templates.
Additionally, I translated different documents like letters, transcripts, marketing documents, etc. from English into German or from German into English. Marketing and advertising texts in particular demand much more creativity from the translator, obviously because of the excessive use of word play, humour and cultural references which cannot be translated literally. I had to grasp the meaning and rewrite the text and adapt it to the target language and culture.
Looking back at this experience makes me feel grateful for the progress I made and the new things I learnt. Also, when it comes to translating in general, there is always something new to learn and therefore remains interesting and challenging.
