Keen to see where their passion for languages might take them, this summer Hymers College students Elodie and James spent a productive fortnight doing a remote work-experience placement with Old Hymerian Nick Aitken (OH 1986-96) with his sports-translation agency Onuba Comms Ltd.

On the agenda included translation work from French and Spanish, languages both are studying, with content, feedback and deadlines tailored to make the experience as realistic as possible.

“It was a great opportunity to develop our own language skills through a variety of tasks using different media, including podcasts, TV and film,” said Elodie. “These were challenging but very enjoyable and this experience has inspired me to keep taking my French and Spanish further at A level!”

The talented linguists were also given an insight into possible future careers, introduced to LinkedIn and the importance of making connections, as well as being treated to a talk with Nick’s long-term colleague Hugo Steckelmacher – a Cambridge graduate, former in-house translator for FIFA and now an editor and language professional with the European Parliament.

“This placement gave us a fun and valuable insight into the sports and language industry,” said James. “It was also a great chance to practise our translation skills and get feedback, while working at our own pace and finding new ways to improve our language ability.”

And in an intriguing full-circle moment, it turned out that James’ dad was given his first job as an accountant at the firm run by Nick’s dad, Glenn - quite the coincidence!

Thanks to everyone involved for their time and effort and we look forward to more Hymers language students getting the chance to work with Nick and the Onuba team in the future.

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