As a PhD Student in Management within the Doctoral School of Valahia University of Targoviste, Romania, I had the opportunity to benefit from an international mobility of five months in Verona, Italy – a great experience that has made a positive impact on my scientific research and also on my inter-cultural relationship skills.
In April 2013, almost one year after the end of my Italian experience, I had the opportunity to participate in the working meeting organized by Valahia University which focused on the international project Passport to trade 2.0 (P2T2). At this meeting, I discovered the information about the P2T2 project and its website resource.
With an attractive interface, this site is a collection of well-structured information about business culture and etiquette in 31 European countries. This information is current and very useful, given the growing number of young people wishing to study or work in a dynamic and multi-cultural European environment.
Although the initiative of the project team is great, I believe that, in order to increase the efficiency of this approach, it would be appropriate for all information on this website to be available also in Romanian language and the project to be widened to all European countries and universities to help in aligning this initiative and work together to identify opportunities to study and work in Europe. At the moment full information is available in English and only a summary for 31 countries is translated into 8 other languages – Romanian, Czech, French, German, Greek, Bulgarian, Finnish and Italian, although the Google Translate tool is integrated into each web page allowing you to get a translation into over 70 languages, is is not very accurate when it comes to conveying complex meaning.
I believe that the Passport to Trade 2.0 project has developed a very useful tool that could have helped me save much time and energy which I invested in organising and conducting my international mobility trip and which I recommend with confidence to all young people who want to enjoy a learning experience or who want to work in Europe.
Ana-Maria Tudorache
PhD Student in the Doctoral School of Valahia University of Targoviste, Romania