Below the pictures you will find short reports written by our students. Read and enjoy!
Convivial
The third day of our trip to Brussels, we had to split the group. Stefan, Linda, Josefine, Mattias and Maja went to a Swedish translator. The rest of us; me, Emelie, Pia and Tina, went to Convival, which is an organization mostly for asylum seekers, but also for people who have got their residence permit and could use some help to get housing and so on.
The reception we got was really good. The man who received us was Sebastian Gratoir, who was a really nice man. He was a bit nervous about his bad English, but he was understandable. When we arrived at Convivial, Sebastian let us sit down and gave us something to drink. Then we waited for his collegue, Florence. When she arrived we sat down together in a room and they explained to us what the organization stood for and what a refugee was. It was hard to listen to everything they said, because they talked for about two hours and it was difficult to concentrate the whole time.
After that, they gave us a tour around the building. It was big! Since many companies donate things and food to them, they had big stocks where they kept these things. They had, for example, one room for furnitures, one room for clothes and so on. And these rooms weren't small.
Around 1-2 o’clock it was time for lunch. Our group with four people split up so that we sat at different tables. That was really interesting. I sat at a table with only volunteers. Of the 90 people who worked on Convivial, I think 30 were volunteers. The ones I talked to were very proud to be volunteers, and they loved their jobs.
By: Olivia Hahne
Central Sweden
We visited the office of Central Sweden in Brussels. We were pleasantly welcomed by one of the two employees, Johan Häggqvist. Before he started his presentation of the organization we were offered some coffee and tea. He started by presenting the different areas where Central Sweden is situated. It is located in the center of Sweden and is run by Dalarna Regional Development Council, Gävleborg Regional Development Council and Örebro Regional Development Council. The organisation provides contact between the European Union in Brussels and the region in Sweden in which Central Sweden is active. Not many people know about this organisation but they can help you with a lot. As already mentioned contacts, but they can also help you in matters like education, information, financial support and networking. Johan told us that they were happy to have us there and that they always have room for visits like ours so that they can make themselves more known. The teachers were satisfied with the help they had received from Central Sweden concerning contact with schools and the EU-commission. As students we didn’t really have a lot to do with this organisation since the teachers had made all the plans with them, but they had made a very interesting program for our visit in Belgium, and Johan’s presentation really enlightened us and gave us a hint about where to turn to if we ever need contacts in the future.
By: Josefine Radegård. Anna-Maria Wallin och Mattias Eriksson
A visit to the Office of Swedish Interpreters
One of the greater experiences in Brussels was to meet a woman who had the position of my dreams: an interpreter. Five of us went to the office for intepreters who work for the European Commission, and there we met with Nuria Bonel. She is the head of all the Swedish speaking employees, or more exactly – all those who have Swedish as their major language. She told us there were about twenty employees there, of whom sixteen worked full-time. She told us that a couple of thousand freelancers also work for the Commission, and they can be placed all over the world. Though, as far as I can recall, these freelancers represented all of the languages in the EU, not only Swedish.
Since I want to become an interpreter myself, it was really amazing to be able to listen to and talk to Nuria Bonel. She had been in the business for many years, and knew exactly what she was talking about when she continued by telling us about the normal tasks of an interpreter. At conferences and meetings, she explained, they interpret simultaneously. To put it short, this means they translate what a speaker says live. An interpreter need to tolerate stress and it’s very important that he or she knows their mothertounge very well, so that they can translate variation and different facets of the language. She described the job as a tool that you must learn to use.
According to her, it takes a long time to become an interpreter, but if you really want the job the road leading there is really worth it. She told us that first of all you need to have an academic degree of some kind to get into the school for interpreting. Also, before being able to start the studies at the school, you need to pass a test for a jury to prove your language skills. The studies include training your memory and different kinds of interpreting. This takes two years, and after that you should be prepared for the next jury that will test your skills once again. If they approve, you’ll get an employement as a freelancer and after a few years you might have the chance to be a full-time employee.
She really emphasized that even though it might seem like a hard job, you will still love it if languages are what you are into. I don’t know about the rest, but I sure am still really tempted by this kind of job.
By: Josefine Radegård
Oostende
In my opinion the most interesting visit during our trip was the on to KA1 School in Oostende. We learnt so much about how an ordinary school works in Belgium and the differences weren’t that big, compared to our school. The only main differences that I came across were that in Belgium you address your teacher with Mr. and Mrs. and parts of the schooling were different. I can recall that the students and teachers on the school were very friendly and thanks to that we immediately met new friends and persons. The students who took care of us and showed us the school were Morgan, Milan, Rick and Jolein. Morgan, for example, took us on a guided tour around the school and other students had prepared questions for us about Sweden. I hope they at least learnt something about the school and life in Sweden. I also look forward to an exchange between the schools in the future.
We visited another school in Belgium as well, the European School in Brussels. It was an international school with students from all over Europe. It was interesting to see the different cultures that met in the school when students from across Europe were studying together.
The trip to Belgium was very interesting; I met new friends and have collected new memories. In the future I hope that students from Belgium can come and visit our school and see what it’s like in Sweden and hopefully they will learn as much about Sweden as we did about Belgium.
By: Mattias Eriksson
The institution of Swedish interpretation in Brussels
One of the greatest experiences in Brussels was to visit the offices of the Swedish interpreters in the European Commission. We had the opportunity to meet the head of the Swedish interpreters, she was very accommodating and pleasant to talk to and she had many interesting and informative things to say. She told us about what the job as an interpreter is all about and what a great responsibility lies on the shoulders of the interpreters. Her job as a conference interpreter is especially important, since she is dealing with simultaneous interpretation. It is crucial to say the right things and not to translate anything into something that can be misinterpreted or that could have several different meanings. In the chamber the interpreters from the different countries sit in separate booths, three persons in each booth. There they take turns to interpret the speakers, depending on who knows the language that is spoken. It is preferable that each person translates an hour at a time and then switch places with another interpreter. That is because it becomes very difficult to concentrate for a longer time. If no one in the booth knows the language, they have to look for someone in one of the other booths who speaks the language in question. If for example a Brazilian politician is speaking and no one in the Swedish booth knows that language, perhaps one in the French booth speaks Brazilian, and then the Swedish person can listen to the French interpretation and interpret from French to Swedish instead of listening to the Brazilian speaker. Another interesting thing that she brought up was that the interpreters sometimes say the wrong words. One time when a woman called Mrs Coffee was about to speak, the Swedish interpreter said that “now it is time for a coffee break”. That only shows that it is a very hard job and that it is easy to misinterpret the things people say. I am very interested in having a similar type of employment in the future and therefore it was enormously interesting for me to hear what the job requires and what kind of education is needed. She said that you need to have an academic education before you proceed to further education concerning languages and interpretation. It is a long way before you reach the European Commission, but as she said, it is always worth taking the chance.
By: Anna-Maria Wallin
European international School, Tuesday
Early in the morning we took the bus to Jaspers in Brussels. The school was really big, with around 3 000 students in primary school and secondary school. Most of the students were sons and daughters of people working at the EU-parlament. When we reached the school, Katrin Svensson told us about how the school worked. Because it was a school with so many languages and so many students, everyone had some lessons in their own languages. During the breaks the students had to stay in the open-air hall. Katrin told us about a lot of rules that the school had and I notices that the school was a bit stricter than ours.
Olivia, Josefine, Maja, Mattias and I went to a Swedish class with Swedish students. It was quite the same as our lessons at our school. I think it was a bit of a pity that we didn’t have time to talk after the lesson. But we learned a lot just looking around in the school and talking with Katrin who answered our questions.
We ate lunch at the school. It was a three-course meal, first soup, and then sausages with mashed potatoes and mashed apples and at last a vanilla pudding. It tasted really well. After lunch we sadly had to go to the EU-parlament. I would have liked to stay longer at the school.
The Oostende school was more like ours. I think that mostly depends on that it was not as big as the European school. What I liked the most about the European school school was the opportunity for students to learn many different languages and that many people from all over Europe met and, last but not least, the free desserts after lunch.
By: Emelie Jansson