External Translation Unit

The Directorate-General for Translation (DG TRAD) provides the European Parliament with translation services for its written or electronic communication in all official languages of the European Union.

Our mission is:

• To make available in all official and working languages all documents relating to Parliament’s role as co-legislator and one of the two arms of the budgetary authority, in order to ensure the legitimacy and transparency of the legislative and budgetary process of the European Union;
• To enable the European Parliament to meet its commitment to the policy of multilingualism, designed to ensure the equal treatment of languages and permitting all citizens of the European Union to communicate with the institutions and have access to the documents of those institutions in their own language;
• To support the Members of the European Parliament and its administration in their multilingual communication with citizens by providing high-quality, modern, multilingual services in text, audio and video and ensuring that content is clear and in all the official languages of the EU;
• To ensure that all these services are supplied as efficiently and effectively as possible.

As a trainee in the Budget Execution/Procurement Team of the External Translation Unit, you will have the possibility to learn in depth about the EP outsourcing policy and the external translation contracts, and in particular:

• How the outsourcing of documents is organized in EP;
• What workflows related to externalization of EP documents are in place within DG TRAD and others;
• How we implement and manage the Budgetary Execution of the contracts;
• What quality control procedures we apply;
• How we organize calls for tenders for translation service, etc.

Your work will involve dealing with quality assessments, processing quality check results and penalties, communicating with external companies and in-house units, predominantly in writing, processing queries and requests arriving from the external contractors.

During the traineeship, you will have the opportunity to learn also about the work of the other teams that are involved in outsourcing documents, and to an extent, about the workflows of other services and units of DG TRAD (Terminology Coordination Unit, Quality Coordination Unit, Finance Unit, etc.). 

To carry out your tasks, as a prospective Schuman trainee you need to have:

• Good organizational and interpersonal skills;
• Well-developed sense of responsibility;
• Very good spoken and written English, and a good knowledge of at least one other official EU language.

You also need to possess good communication skills, be open-minded and able to work in a team.

If you are interested in this offer, please submit a motivation letter in English summarizing your educational background and your motivation to apply. The motivation letter should not be longer than 600 words.

Please also submit relevant supporting documents (university diplomas, course transcripts, etc.). The motivation letter and the supporting documents are to be uploaded as a single PDF file.