LKT welcomes its first work placement student
Last week, Louise Killeen Translations welcomed its first work experience student to the office to spend a week getting to know the translation industry. Ellie McWiggin is studying German at Crompton House School in Oldham and was keen to learn more about where a career with languages can take you. Here, she shares her experiences of her time as part of the LKT team.
My placement started with an introductory session and a ‘Getting to know LKT’ exercise, which involved looking at the website and answering questions about the company, enabling me to learn more about the place I had chosen to do my work experience. As well as this, I gradually learnt more about the translation industry by taking part in other activities such as the team meeting and ISO checks. I found these very interesting as I could gain more of an insight into what goes on ‘behind the scenes’ of the business.
Later in the week I was put forward to do some admin work. This involved creating archive discs and archive spreadsheets. At first, I was quite nervous to be doing something ‘real’ for the company, but with the help of the LKT team it was no problem and I ended up enjoying it!
My favourite part of the week was when I got the chance to try some translation. I used my knowledge from tasks I had completed previously in the week, for example, the LKT Style Guide, where I acquired skills on punctuation and grammar in translation, and then applied these in practice. I thoroughly enjoyed the translation pieces I worked on because I was able to use the same software as the LKT team which helped me to understand the more complex technology used in translation. I obviously found this exercise a challenge as I have only been learning German for 4 years, but I found it a great experience.
I have really enjoyed my placement at Louise Killeen Translations – I have been involved in many activities and I feel it has helped me widen my knowledge of working environments. I’d like to thank the entire LKT team for granting me this opportunity, providing me with all the help I needed and making me feel so welcome.