As a Master Student of Learning and Communication in Multilingual and Multicultural Context (Multi learn) at the University of Luxembourg, I had the opportunity to enrol in a course on “Terminology in the EU”. One had a chance of attending a three-week study visit if one passed the exam of the course. I chose to do my study visit at the communication team over terminology because I was interested in writing articles.
It was amazing how comfortable I felt from the first day due to the warm reception from both the permanent staff and the trainees in the communication team . I shared the office with three trainees who were very helpful. They gave me an overview of their daily duties. This included managing the TermCoord Website by writing weekly articles like the IATE Term of the Week and I-ate Food Term of the week, publishing the articles on social media.
I was instructed to write an article about a Food Term and a linguistic article as well. While writing the articles, I learned how to create banners for the articles and therefore became familiarised with Shutterstock and Canva through the process. Apart from writing articles, I had the possibility of carrying out an interview with a linguist professor. I furthermore had the opportunity to attend staff meetings, where they discussed their current and future projects. I noticed during the meetings that the colleagues were engaged and motivated towards their projects.
My three-week experience as a Study visitor at the TermCoord unit was fruitful as I was able to experience the theory I learned in class practically in the professional level, and I gained a deeper understanding on the importance of terminology beyond translation. For instance, I learned that terminology can be used as a resource for improving the websites related to languages. It was moreover a great pleasure for me to work with the friendly, creative and innovative staff of the communication team as I had a chance to both contribute towards the projects of the unit and learn at the same time as well as interacting with staff coming from different countries thus broadening both my social and professional network.
Written by Edna Muliro : Study visitor at the Terminology Coordination Unit of the European Parliament in Luxembourg. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Education and a Bachelor’s degree in Arts (English, Linguistics, literature and cultures comparative linguistics in German and French ) She is currently studying for a Master’s degree in Language and Communication in Multilingual and Multicultural context in Luxembourg University. She speaks Swahili, English, German and French.