Hi I've been in a small town near Munich, Germany for 8 months now and I'm working for a medium sized translation company. Thought I would share my experiences so far with people.

It was really scary at first but that's completely normal I think. I think when you get to another country you often realise how much you don't know in terms of the language but it gets a lot better- I particularly had (and still have) trouble with Bavarian but I've learnt some phrases, I've noticed that I speak faster and don't need to think about grammar so much and I watch films without subtitles now and understand most things. The best thing to do is immerse yourself a lot- I read the local newspaper 2 times a week, watch the news, read novels, watch films etc.

From the work point of view I can say that Germans work differently to us in the UK and that it takes some time to get used to. I got sent home on my first day cos it was too much for me. My colleagues start at 8 and leave at 4, whereas I prefer to get there at half 8 and leave at half 4. The job was really hard to begin with and I still get given some difficult things to translate but I'm turning down less things now and finally reached the amount a professional would have to do in a day to get enough wages. My colleagues also don't often talk a lot when they work and it takes a while to make some friends. But they say when you've made a German friend, you've made a friend for life!

Its really good to get out and about too. So far I've been to Munich and Nuremberg, am going to Salzburg in Austria to visit, gone to rock concerts and watched some local events. That's what I enjoy most here, being able to get out and go to places I've never been before.

I'm loving it here basically, so much, I don't wanna go home and I'm hoping to move back here permanently.

Hope this was useful

That's such a good point - you really have to consider the dialect spoken in your destination city before you arrive, and Bavarian sounds really tricky. It's the same with Catalan in Barcelona, I suppose.

Working in translation sounds like a serious job - did you need any training before you started? So glad you're having such a lovely time out there, thanks for your post!

Exactly. Most of my colleagues speak standard German so when I'm out on the street it can be tough but I try and speak to the locals a few times a week.

Thankfully no but it would've been useful. I only did basic texts like adverts during the 2nd year of uni so it was a shock when I got here and saw that they do all kinds of things. They've gradually built me up now with texts and they just said to read through the tutorials for any software.

You're welcome- thanks for the site! Its a really good idea.

busylizzie wrote:
That's such a good point - you really have to consider the dialect spoken in your destination city before you arrive, and Bavarian sounds really tricky. It's the same with Catalan in Barcelona, I suppose.

Yeah, you do have to consider the dialect and other languages spoken in the area. I am Catalan and feel bad when I see foreigners who have just moved to Barcelona expecting to learn Spanish and then they find people speak another language! And at university, lectures are mostly in Catalan, not in Spanish -unless the lecturer is not a Catalan, which is not the norm-, at least in public universities. Erasmus/exchange students sometimes ask lecturers to speak Spanish but they don't always want to...

Anyway, don't want to get anyone scared, but it is one of the things you have to consider!