At Delingua, we spread information about the language service industry to university students but also to younger students who will be future experts. For this reason, we regularly organise DelinguaLAB and give lectures on the language service industry and working at a translation agency in different universities. This autumn, we also invited TET (work practice programme) trainees to our office to get acquainted with our industry. Through these means, we make the language service industry more visible to increasingly younger students in the hope of having more professionals in the industry in the future.
Below, you can read about our TET trainee Sofia’s experiences from her two-week training period.
TET training at Delingua
My two-week TET period at Delingua just came to an end. I was able to carry out numerous different jobs and tasks to assist the employees. Delingua’s employees gave me a warm welcome and were very friendly towards me. I really enjoyed my time as a TET trainee at Delingua.
Why did you apply for a TET traineeship at Delingua?
I wanted to do my TET training in a place where I could learn something useful and which would potentially come in handy in the future. There was an announcement posted on Delingua’s Instagram account stating that they would be happy to welcome TET trainees to their translation agency. I thought that this would be a great TET training placement for me because I have always been interested in languages and I am also bilingual myself. I also wanted to learn about the operations of translation services and, therefore, I decided to apply to Delingua. So I sent an e-mail, and the very next day, I received a reply. A few days later, I dropped by the office to sign an employment contract, and then there was only a month left before the TET period would begin.
What did you carry out during your TET period?
The first thing I did was clean and organise one of the shelves in the office. After that, I scouted for translators. I searched the SKTL website for authorised Finnish-German translators and compiled their names and contact information into an Excel spreadsheet. In addition, I worked with customers’ terminology in the terminology management system QTerm used by Delingua. I also got to create a term base for one of Delingua’s customers in Finnish, German and English in QTerm. I was also tasked with checking and correcting a Finnish-German translation as a proofreader.
In addition, I helped the employees compile and clean up various Excel spreadsheets. I also got to translate a short text from Finnish into English for a customer in the MemoQ application. In addition, I got to come up with ideas for Delingua’s Christmas calendar that will be published on Instagram and scanned a few letters that came in the mail. So, I’ve had the opportunity to do a whole lot of things!
What have you learned?
During my TET period, I have learned to use the applications necessary for translations while also learning how to translate texts and create term bases as well as how to proceed with these tasks. I have also learned to make better use of computer applications such as Excel.
Delingua has been a pleasant and interesting place to complete the TET period at. Being a TET trainee at Delingua has also been fun thanks to the extremely nice employees. I have formed a good idea of how a translation agency operates, and I expect that I will benefit from the TET period in the future as well!
