In September-October 2017, I did a 5-week internship in Barcelona, working in the non-governmental research organisation Centre Delàs d’Estudis per la Pau, obtained through the organisation Connect-123.
The office I worked in consists of a team of around 15 people. The work involves writing reports for the EU and for the Spanish government, as well as investigating state expenditure on armaments and the military budget. Every report written is translated from Spanish into both Catalan and English. As I was the only native English person working in the office, my role primarily involved helping writers with translation.
During the first week, I assisted one of the employees in the office by looking over her translation of a report into English. This was to ensure the words used were appropriate in the context and the sentences were comprehensible. After expressing my enjoyment with this task, my boss gave me a 45-page report in the second week to translate myself. This project seemed initially overwhelming, but being entrusted with such responsibility was extremely rewarding.
An internship abroad has many positive aspects. Living abroad for this amount of time enabled me to fully immerse myself with Spanish culture, and I was able to properly get to know the city. It also allowed me to significantly improve my Spanish, most importantly in speaking and conversation, which is difficult to do when learning a language in the UK.
I also really enjoyed the relaxed Spanish work ethic. The lunch break in the middle of the day could be up to two hours, and on Friday the working day finishes at 2pm. I got the impression that life outside of the workplace is equally as important as the work itself, which is refreshing in contrast to previous work experience placements I have had in the UK.
Another interesting aspect of my particular internship was that it coincided with the build-up to the Catalonia referendum, so there were lots of protests and demonstrations taking place while I was there. This was ideal as the nature of my internship was journalism and current affairs, and therefore I was able to leave the office and be directly involved in what was happening in Barcelona at the time.
There were also many challenging aspects to the working abroad, particularly with the language barrier. Initially, I found it very difficult to keep up with the Spanish spoken during meetings, especially any informal colloquialisms. Furthermore, most of the people in the office spoke Catalan as their first language, so they often chatted in Catalan in the office which meant I could not keep up with what was happening. Aside from the workplace, settling into living in foreign city was also difficult in many ways, as the independence was something to which I was not accustomed.
Nonetheless, my internship abroad was overall an enriching and very fun experience which I would recommend to any student, not only those who study languages, as a way of experiencing working in industry while simultaneously exploring another part of the world.
Image Credits:
https://pixabay.com/photo-2647714/
Taken by the author
Taken by the author
Taken by the author