LANGUAGE SPECIALIST PROFILES
Lucy
Click here to listen to Lucy's words - spoken by an actor
Having achieved an MA (Hons) in French and Spanish (interpreting and translating) and a Diploma in Public Service Interpreting, I wanted to find a career that used my language skills on a daily basis. I used to receive daily emails with language job availabilities and one day a message arrived simply stating: 'Top Language Job, Central London, apply here' (this was in the days before open recruitment). When I went to the first interview and found out exactly who I'd be working for and what the job would involve, it sounded ideal.
During my 2 years in SIS, I have attended various in-house language classes to enhance my range of language skills. Despite having had formal interpreter training, I also attended the in-house interpreter training sessions which concentrate on both linguistic skills and interpreting techniques. These workshops also opened up my eye to how different the role of an SIS interpreter is compared to an interpreter in the corporate world. It's great to share stories of interpreting experiences, ranging from dealing with agents to going for dinner but not having the chance to eat anything as everyone kept talking. I have now done several interpreting assignments on a broad range of topics, which has given me a great insight into what other areas of the office get up to. Although most of my assignments have been in London, I have also been to Latin America to interpret at a meeting there.
In addtion to your daily tasks, the language section also offers some development posts. For the past few months I have been the second point of contact for the SIS interpreter service. On a number of occasions this has involved taking phone calls late in the afternoon desperately seeking an interpreter for the next day. This development post has meant that I have more contact with other departments requesting interpreters and with other linguists.
After completing my probation year, I was offered the opportunity to learn a new, non European language - every linguist's dream. For the past six months I have been having 2 hours of classes, 2 days a week at an external language school. I have already had occasion to use my new language within the Service, which was very interesting and motivating. It has been fantastic to learn a new language so different from the European languages I do have, bringing with it whole new grammar and cultural issues.
Martin
I joined SIS 5 years ago as an Arabic translator. I had learned the language at university and gone on to use it in various jobs in journalism. But I always had the nagging feeling that my work was wrapping for tomorrow's fish and chips, and I wanted a job where I could use my Arabic more, while continuing to draw on my knowledge of the Middle East.
I responded to an ad in the paper, and after some rigorous language tests (and the rest of the recruitment process common to all SIS entrants) I joined the Service's Linguist Branch. I immediately found myself surrounded by colleagues with a deep knowledge of an astonishing range of languages, a love of translation and expertise garnered from working on all sorts of specialist subjects.
Initially my own work was mainly in support of counter-terrorist operations, including correspondence to and from agents working in very dangerous situations. While this frequently meant working to tight deadlines, it also gave me an insight into how our relationships with our agents develop. But as a translator I work for various teams in SIS and a normal day might include documents on a wide range of regional subjects too, as well as correspondence with foreign intelligence services.
With the help of in-house workshops I also interpreted at meetings with visiting delegations from our Middle Eastern counterparts. When not translating, I had lessons to build on my knowledge of Spanish. I subsequently began learning an entirely new language, with a day of individual classes every week. This prospect was one of the main things that had attracted me to a career as an SIS linguist - constantly acquiring new knowledge, with opportunities to use it in ways that would be impossible anywhere else.
Two years after joining SIS I went on an internal secondment to a team working on counter-terrorism. My role was to keep our stations and operational teams informed of what the Service's customers needed to know, evaluate the intelligence provided by our agents and then issue it as formal reports to our readers in government. I had to assess whether our agents were telling us the truth and how we could steer them to develop their contacts so as to get the information we wanted - information which would often be translated by the Service's linguists. I travelled to the region, questioned agents and met members of the foreign intelligence services. Back in London I attended regular discussions on counter-terrorism with other Whitehall analysts and briefed senior colleagues for high-level meetings.
I have since returned to the Linguist Branch, with a much clearer understanding of how my work as a translator is used in SIS. This is an advantage when it comes to talking to other teams about the material they send us to translate, enabling me to identify where there might be valuable intelligence, and where a summary rather than a full translation would be more useful. Meanwhile I am continuing to learn new languages, and in future might take some classes in Arabic dialects. In due course I will probably apply for another internal secondment, perhaps this time to a team dealing with regional matters. But in the meantime there are plenty of challenges in my work as a translator - always well aware that the one thing it will not be used for is wrapping tomorrow's fish and chips.
Jamil
I joined SIS in 2006 on the back of a Law degree. Having decided (very quickly) that a career in the private sector wasn't for me, I looked at the various options in the Civil Service, of which SIS looked like providing the most interesting, stimulating and - if you want it - demanding job. The joining process was long, but the wait is well worth the feeling when they tell you you're in.
Since I joined as a non-linguist, my route into language work was not the standard one: I completed a two month training course and one year into the finance department first. It was during this year that I was asked if I would mind doing an Urdu assessment to gauge the standard of my Urdu skills. Having learnt Urdu as a second language in a family context, I was interested to know how much of it was simply day-to-day knowledge or, whether I could use it in any capacity in the Service. A successful test led to a post in a team working on Urdu and Punjabi material.
Six months into the job, I know that my linguistic abilities have been enhanced and I have developed good skills of analysis and intelligence gathering. With the inevitable array of work in Urdu and Punjabi across the Service, I established close working relationships with desks dealing with regional and counter terrorism issues, in particular. The work can include role playing exercises in Urdu, or may involve providing operational briefings to a group of people across the intelligence community. There is certainly a lot of interesting and front line work going on, and the volume is increasing.
I hope to complete a few years in this post before moving on to work experience within a geographical team, thus combining language specialism with more hands-on operational work. More than anything else, it's great that this is possible and - if you have the talent, encouraged since you can always return to the linguist team if you choose. There is also the possibility of applying for postings, and with the global intelligence interest in a language such as Urdu, there's always the chance of using languages out there too.
The language team encourages you to enhance your current language skills. With the possibility of learning new languages alongside all of this too, I certainly count myself as lucky to be experiencing life as a linguist, an option I had not even considered before joining SIS!
