The UEA Brussels International Careers and Employability Programme (BICEP) takes place in April or May each year and there are 6 places for LCS students.

BICEP is a one-week group visit to Brussels which will raise awareness of job opportunities in international organisations including NGOs, public affairs, translation and interpreting services, media and other employers working at the international level.  The emphasis will be on EU and Brussels-based lobbying, Think Tanks, third sector organisations and media but other international organisations will also be covered including NATO which has its headquarters in Belgium and the United Nations which has representation there.

There will be a charge but the School subsidises more than half the cost in order to give students an opportunity to find out more about jobs, including translation and interpretation, at the international level.

LCS students and staff taking part in BICEP 2012 visiting the European Parliament.

Mark Potter – MA Applied Translation Studies, who took part in the programme tells of his experience:

"A particular highlight of the programme was a visit to the European Commission's Directorate-General for Translation. For the group of linguists taking part, this was an especially exciting visit, and represented privileged access to a workplace we have read much about but which is more hidden from the public eye than other parts of the European Union institutions.

Not only were we able to gain an insight into the buildings where the European Commission's Brussels translators do their work, our small group met with two translators from the English department there, who talked to us about their work and answered any questions our small group wanted to ask.

We learned about the average working day of a DGT translator, shown the special version of Trados translation software which the Directorate-General uses, we talked about possibilities for traineeships, recruitment processes and requirements, and the long-term prospects for translators in the institutions.

For aspiring linguists like ourselves, this was one of the several visits during the week which gave us much food for thought for our own futures and a unique opportunity to see the impressive work of the largest translation organisation in the world."