Publish date
Closing date
Reference
Traineeship 2019
Type position

The Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union offers linguistic traineeships for university graduates or students from the Member States of the EU who wish to acquire an understanding of the Translation Centre´s work and gain professional experience.

In accordance with Administrative Decision No 1/2010 on traineeships offered by the Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union, the Translation Centre is organizing a selection procedure for the following six trainee positions in 2019:

  • 1 Italian translator (Translation Department)
  • 1 German translator (Translation Department)
  • 1 Estonian translator (Translation Department)
  • 1 Terminologist (Translation Support Department)
  • 2 Linguists specialised in automatic translation and computer assisted translation tools or document engineering students with proven skills in foreign languages (preferably postgraduate) (Translation Support Department)

1. Selection criteria and planned duration of the traineeship

1.1. Eligibility criteria

To be eligible to take part in this selection procedure, the applicant must, on the closing date for applications (29 March 2019), meet the following requirements:

  • Have completed at least four semesters of university studies, or equivalent education, in a field of interest to the Centre;
  • Level of skills: have obtained some initial experience in one of the areas of work engaged in by the Centre, either:
    • From a specialist component of the applicant´s studies for a university degree, from a dissertation or other research project conducted as part of his/her studies, or
    • Through work experience, or a previous traineeship, of at least two months duration, or
      The following criterion is applicable only to translator traineeships:
    • Through a language-related traineeship: applicants, in that case, must be able to translate from two official European Union languages into their main language;
  • Language requirements: applicants must have a thorough knowledge of one of the official languages of the European Union and a satisfactory command of another official European Union language, to the extent necessary for carrying out the duties to be performed. A good knowledge of one of the working languages of the Centre (French or English) is an advantage.

Applicants from candidate countries must have a thorough knowledge of at least one of the languages of a candidate country and a good knowledge of English or French.

1.2. Selection criteria

In addition to the above, applicants must meet the following specific requirements for the various trainee positions (“principal language” below means mother tongue, or a language of which the applicants have an equivalent command):

Italian translator: translation studies, with Italian as principal language.
Duration of traineeship: three months between June and December 2019.

German translator: translation studies, with German as principal language.
Duration of traineeship: three months between June and December 2019.

Estonian translator: translation studies, with Estonian as principal language.
Duration of traineeship: three months between June and December 2019.

Terminologist: studies (preferably postgraduate) in the fields of terminology or translation specialising in terminology or in corpus linguistics or in automatic language processing.
Duration of traineeship: three months between June and December 2019.
Desired knowledge:

  • Conceptual knowledge of terminology
  • Application of terminology extraction methods and tools
  • Use of language corpora and corpus analysis tools

Possible activities:

  • Working with a range of local term extraction tools in order to evaluate their effectiveness
  • Contribution under the supervision of in-house terminologists to the
    • maintenance of the Translation Centre’s entries in IATE
    • maintenance of local termbases
    • preparation of terminology collections in the fields covered by Translation Centre’s clients
  • Building relevant corpora using CdT resources and perform terminology extraction and evaluation based on these corpora

Linguists specialised in automatic translation and computer assisted translation tools or document engineering students with proven skills in foreign languages (preferably postgraduate)

Fields: automatic translation and computer assisted translation tools, desktop publishing tools translation memories, machine translation systems, computational linguistics, natural language processing, databases, proofing tools, corpus linguistic text banks, bitexts and concordancers, terminology management tools, terminology extraction tools, translation process automation, pre-processing of documents for translation purposes techniques, macros development (mainly for MS Word, Excel and Power Point), etc.

Duration of traineeship: three months between June and December 2019.

Desired knowledge:

  • Use of several market-leading CAT tools, including SDL Trados Studio 2017 (or 2015)
  • Translation memories maintenance best-practices
  • Machine translation output evaluation techniques (manual and automatic)
  • Linguistic corpora management and corpus analysis tools

Possible activities:

  • Customised MT engines building with CdT resources and evaluation of the quality of the output by working together with the CdT language teams
  • Processing/maintenance/creation of subsets of translation memories in order to re-train MT systems for improved quality
  • Extraction/maintenance of glossaries in order to improve MT quality
  • Translation memory analysis and definition of translation memory management best-practices

2. Application procedure

For applications to be valid, applicants must submit, in an A4-format envelope, the following:

  • the application form, duly completed, signed and dated, which is available at: www.cdt.europa.eu,
  • a copy of the diplomas or certificates,
  • a letter of recommendation attesting experience in the field of the traineeship being applied for.

Applications will at no stage be returned to the applicants.

CLOSING DATE: APPLICATIONS MUST BE SENT NO LATER THAN 29 MARCH 2019.

Please note that in order to be considered, all applications received must be dispatched within the deadline, date as postmarked. We strongly recommend that applications be sent by registered mail.

Please send your application to:

Translation Centre for the Bodies of the European Union – Human Resources Section
Ref.: Traineeship 2019 (+ title of the position)
Bâtiment Drosbach
12E, rue Guillaume Kroll
L- 1882 LUXEMBOURG

3. Selection procedure

The selection procedure will be carried out in two parts:

  • The first part will be based on the above-mentioned eligibility criteria (see 1.1.), and is intended to ascertain whether the applicant meets all the mandatory eligibility criteria and all the formal requirements laid down in the application procedure. Applicants who do not meet these criteria will not be considered.
  • The second part will consider the selection criteria (see 1.2.) and the suitability of the applicant´s profile in relation to the traineeship to be awarded. This part will be marked on a scale from 0 to 10.

The Selection Committee will examine the file of all eligible applicants and will give them points in accordance with the selection criteria listed above. The Heads of Department responsible for the specific traineeships will select the applicants with the highest points, based on which the Director of the Centre will draw up the final list of successful applicants.

The Human Resources Section will notify all applicants in writing at the end of the selection procedure. Successful applicants will be given a contract, all information regarding their traineeship and a list of documents to be provided before commencing the traineeship.

4. Traineeship grants

Trainees shall be entitled to a monthly grant amounting to 25% of the basic monthly salary of a temporary agent in function group AD, grade 5, step 1 (which is EUR 1 196.84 in 2019), on condition that they are not entitled to a grant or a financial contribution from another source. Article 3 of the Administrative Decision gives detailed information on traineeship grants and related matters (health and accident insurance, taxation, reimbursement of travel expenses at the beginning and end of the traineeship, etc.).

5. General information

Administrative Decision No 1/2010 on traineeships is the document legally laying down the rules governing the selection and employment conditions of trainees.

Protection of personal data
The Translation Centre will ensure that applicants’ personal data are processed as required by Regulation (EU) 2018/1725 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 23 October 2018 on the protection of natural persons with regard to the processing of personal data by the Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and on the free movement of such data, and repealing Regulation (EC) No 45/2001 and Decision No 1247/2002/EC. This applies in particular to the confidentiality and security of such data. For this purpose, you can send your request to the following e-mail addresses: rh.recrutement@cdt.europa.eu or to the Data protection Officer of the Translation Centre: data-protection@cdt.europa.eu.

Equal opportunities
The Translation Centre is an equal opportunities employer and recruits applicants without distinction as to race, political, philosophical or religious beliefs, gender or sexual orientation and without reference to their marital status or family situation.

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