When Glasgow pupils Lynsey Gaughan and Kathleen MacMillan, of Lourdes Secondary, were offered the chance to take up language-based work experience at a local European patent and trade mark attorney’s office, they didn’t know what to expect. Neither of the fourth year girls had considered a career in languages, but they enjoyed French at school and saw this as an opportunity to explore its use.

Murgitroyd and Company, which has branches in Aberdeen, London, Belfast, Dublin, France and Germany, employs eight translators in French and German in its Glasgow offices. During their four-day placement, the girls worked with the French team, learning the jargon of patent and trade mark work.

Florence Camelford, a former English teacher in France, is concerned primarily with the translation and checking of patent documents for a variety of products. As an introduction to translating skills, she gave the girls passages in French on Charles Rennie Mackintosh to translate into English. This gave them their first chance to try a computer keyboard featuring French accents and some translation software, into which the translators can save technical vocabulary and phraseology for later reference.

A lesson on dictionary skills from James McGill, one of the German translators and a former pupil of nearby Crookston Castle (now merged with Penilee Secondary), provided a basis for the girls’ translation work.

They found drafting and redrafting their Mackintosh passage hard but enjoyable. They welcomed the broader range of language provided by the software and dictionary and had more confidence in the quality of their final translation, which was reviewed by Mrs Camelford.

Work on patent documents followed, with the specialised language offering new challenges. Staff in different departments of the company guided Lynsey and Kathleen through the detailed stage-by-stage development of a patent for an invention. By the end of their placement, they had encountered patents for bicycle parts, specialist medical products, a new design for credit cards and unusual “plant-growing hats”. For terms such as “modular intramedullar nail” - a pin used for hip replacement - access to the translation software and specialist dictionaries was essential.

The girls both found that the work greatly improved their dictionary skills and anticipate they will save time in future reading and writing work at school.

They also acquired new reading skills through checking German documents written by Mr McGill. The final check of punctuation, format and numerical details is crucial to the production of a final patent, he explained. It did not matter that neither Lynsey nor Kathleen had studied German.

“It’s actually good to have a linguist who doesn’t speak the language of the document to make the final check,” he said. “They are not distracted by the pattern of the language and just focus on the details.”

The girls were disappointed they did not speak any French in the course of the working day but they were able to listen in to conversations of native speaker translators.

Their teacher, Paul Middleton, is confident that the placement will still help them in an oral test because of the unusual breadth of written language they have acquired. They will also have an ideal conversation platform to demonstrate their knowledge of perfect and imperfect tenses in describing regular work patterns and individual tasks in the working day.

Lynsey and Kathleen say that working at Murgitroyd and Company has had a positive effect on their attitude towards language learning. They now plan to take Higher French and hope to combine the language with their proposed careers in law and journalism.

The girls have benefited both linguistically and technologically from a “meaningful work placement”, says Mr Middleton.

Assistant headteacher George McNally is keen to develop the contact with Murgitroyd and Company. “It’s been an eye-opener for me,” he says, “and I’m most impressed with the confidence the girls have gained.”