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thelinguist.uberflip.com JUNE/JULY The Linguist 31 SECTION HEADER OPINION & COMMENT Michelle Perez-Lotcho ACIL is a freelance translator, Spanish into English. www.mpltranslation.co.uk TL I spent my first day as an official of the European Commission with more than 100 other newcomers from various departments. Induction sessions were available in English and French, and as demand for English was high, I volunteered for the francophone group. Not everyone had been recruited through open competition: some were contractors. In small groups, we shared our knowledge on everything from securing a permanent post to cycling safely in the city. The next day, I was inducted into the Directorate-General for Translation (DGT). The first presentation concerned information resources. Electronic dictionaries are preferred but the DGT Library has a printed collection, including the kind of high-quality specialised dictionaries that are increasingly hard to find elsewhere. Each translator has a 'book-bag' or personal allowance of reference materials. Each language department has a 'documentalist' coordinating resources. Multilingual newspapers line the route to the canteen. In the first weeks, I received training in numerous translation tools. Some were familiar from the DGT website, including the IATE terminology bank and EU style guides. Others are in-house only, such as Euramis, a database of translation memories (TM) with a concordance function that searches across thousands of translations. We use the Studio 2014 CAT tool. Consistency is important and most documents to be translated come with a TM, but translators are free to edit matches and request changes to TMs if necessary. Michelle Homden MCIL is a translator at the Directorate- General for Translation in Brussels. TL Our columnist's first months as an EU translator MICHELLE HOMDEN Working for Europe All translators have their work checked by colleagues. Translations are designated either for revision, for example if they are for publication, or proofreading. However, during my probation period, which lasts nine months, all of my work is revised and assessed. Each new recruit is assigned a mentor in the same unit. Mine is a well of helpful advice, ranging from the dress-code (very relaxed) to dealing with bureaucracy in Belgian banks (less relaxed). Training, always in English or French, is ongoing, with lectures on the European Union, its history and institutions. A whole day was devoted to professional ethics, covering topics such as declaring outside interests and using social media judiciously. English, French and German are the three operating languages for Commission-wide communications, but French is the language of Poetry – the software used for managing translation requests. However, in communications between colleagues across departments, English prevails: from correspondence with HR officers to breathless conversations in the translators' running group. It is not the English of any anglophone country but a dynamic polyglottal composite. The small-ads on the staff intranet featured a 'luminous apartment with cave' – a linguist versed in European culture knows that this means 'bright, with cellar'. Here you could just about get away with speaking only English, but monolingualism is not an option. Although we still speak in English, my father now looks to me if he feels he isn't being understood for cultural or linguistic reasons. We also send text messages in Spanish because this is a medium we previously did not communicate in, and this has expanded our relationship. Learning Spanish has definitely brought me closer to him. On recent visits to uncles and cousins in Spain, I was able to speak to them for the first time, even if I was nervous to join in discussions at the dinner table. Now I have a better understanding of my other culture, I realise that the little behaviour traits that make me and my siblings different from our friends are quite Spanish. I know my journey isn't complete. I may be able to speak the language but there is so much history that I need to catch up on. I stay on top of current affairs, partly out of interest and partly to converse with my dad. Luckily, history is a topic that interests me, and as I continuously read up on historic and current culture as part of my work as a translator, I get ever closer to bridging the gap in my life. There has been a lot of research into the benefits of a bilingual brain but something that is often overlooked is the personal effects that bilingualism can have: that connection to our identity and family relationships. Although my daughter is only a quarter Spanish and I am not a native speaker (who some argue should be the only ones to teach a child a language), I am raising her bilingually – not just for the known cognitive benefits and future opportunities, but so she doesn't miss out as I did. She gets a present in her shoes from the Three Kings, and will hopefully never have the identity issues that I struggled through. I hope, like me, she grows up proud to have another culture and embraces it to the fullest. FAMILY LIFE Michelle in Spain as a child with her father and uncle, who she was unable to talk with (far left); and with her daughter, who she is raising bilingually in Spanish and English (left)