Arriving in Finland – Colorit ry.rf.

Colourful Stories workshop October 2018

by M.S.

One bright autumn day I arrived in Finland from England. I was looking for an apartment and a job. A company wanted a translator with good English.

Of course I was without a diploma from a Finnish language school or even a prestigious business school in Finland. I possessed only a bunch of documents with high marks from English and Canadian language schools.

I got the job despite my lack of Finnish credentials. Now I had to learn a whole new world of terminology. I wrote down words and their meanings in English, Swedish and Finnish. Soon I had compiled a complete dictionary.

That was long before the time of Internet and online dictionaries and all things we have today. Things were manual back then.