Law / Karta Stałego Pobytu - Polish heritage and permanent resident permit in Poland [7]


That is not going to happen. Your Polish heritage is irrelevant in obtaining a residence permit.

Permanent residence is granted only after five years of temporary residence, for which you will need a real job with a real contract with an employer that is willing to go through the hassle of getting a work permit for you. And you have to get that job before you come to Poland. You are not allowed to look for work on a tourist visa.

I am assuming you are not from the EU or one of the former Soviet Republics. When asking questions like this, it helps if you state where you are from. It makes a huge difference.

Work / What are some good tips that you have that would boost my chance of getting a job in Poland after graduation? [5]

Possible? Yes, but then winning the lottery is also possible.

Probable? Not likely. Why would anyone bother hiring you when there are plenty of Ukrainians around to take any job that opens up.

If you are from outside the EU (except Ukraine), extremely unlikely. Make your plans on the very safe assumption that you will never be able to earn a single penny during your stay in Poland.

Forget about teaching English or giving English lessons. The competition is fierce, and it's very difficult for a newbie to enter the market unless they are willing to work for poverty wages under lousy conditions. If you are not a native speaker, you have zero chance. Indians do not count as native speakers.

Language / "Taka prawda" - What does this Polish phrase mean? [19]

It's not Polish, but Old Church Slavonic. Hospodin pomiluj means "Lord, have mercy", and is sung many times during an Orthodox or Greek Catholic church service. Many, many, many times.

Work / Polish Canadian ESL job/student advice [78]


I highly doubt it. If you had, you would have a much more realistic conception of the field. My guess is that you dabbled in it, and never translated anything that need to be published.

I have translated about 1000 scientific and medical articles and twelve specialist books from German and Polish, and started translating and editing in 1983.

As far as academic translating goes, that is where the money is at. Outside of the upper reaches of the STEM. medical, financial and legal fields, translating rarely pays well, and work is hard to come by. It ain't easy making a living at it if you don't have high-level knowledge of a STEM or high finance or law, or if you don't have ABUNDANT experience in writing publish-ready copy for journalistic outlets on a short deadline.

Yes, that is a small part of the translating work that's out there, but it happens to be the only work that pays decent money. Most of the other "general" work is done by dabblers such as yourself, for a fraction of the pay. Few "general" translators make a living of it. By far most do it as a sideline, or for beer money.

I have translated about 1000 scientific and medical articles and twelve specialist books from German and Polish, and started translating and editing in 1983.

Work / Polish Canadian ESL job/student advice [78]


No they don't. There is no way around it. That is absurd. They can't "manage the situation" without intimate knowledge of the subject area, and in highly specialized fields, that takes years of study.

A good translator knows their limits, and steers clear of anything beyond their pay grade. And if they do want to translate beyond their pay grade, they seriously study for it.

Don't pontificate on a field that you know jack $hit about. Your conceptions of what translation involves are ridiculous. It is much harder than you seem to imagine, especially if you want to make a living at it.

Work / Polish Canadian ESL job/student advice [78]

It's the same for all specialized fields. The people who have the academic background necessary to translate are generally not interested in translating because they can make much better money working in their fields. And those who don't have the academic background aren't able to translate material at this level because they don't have a clue what they are translating, and never will unless they study it.

Translating is a easy field to get into, but a very difficult field to make decent money in unless you have some serious specialty. Anybody can be a translator; no formal qualifications, degrees or certificates are necessary beyond good writing skills in your own native language and good reading skills in the source language. Understanding the language is the easy part. Understanding the material that you are translating is another matter entirely.

All in all, if the OP aspires to be a translator, the worst approach is to get a masters in English. She should study a technical field to the point where she can easily understand technical literature in that field. But by then she would figure out that she can earn a better living actually working in the field herself. Compounding the error of choosing an unsaleable undergraduate major by piling on top of it an even more unsaleable graduate degree is a recipe for disaster.

And she should go where the money is. There is little money to be made in humanistic fields like art history. People working in fields like that don't have the money to pay a good translator. Those working in STEM fields and high finance, on the other hand, can afford to pay.

Work / Polish Canadian ESL job/student advice [78]


If you are not a natural at real-world networking, then translating is not an option for you. If you are not totally comfortable knocking on doors, forget about it. Practically all of the good work is advertised solely by word of mouth, person-to-person, face-to-face. Without an extensive real-world network, you are doomed. You might get a project now and then, but you'll never earn enough to butter your bread. Forget about the internet as a tool for finding jobs. You'll starve to death. Internet free-lancing pays peanuts.


No. It's something you have to have even before you consider translating, or that you seriously study. People do not "pick up" highly specialized subject matter. They study it for years, and have plenty of experience in writing about it. They know the formats and standards for publication in their field inside out.

If you don't understand science and scientific writing very, very well, then you are not going to be able to translate a scientific paper, no matter how much ad hoc "research" you do. Same with finance or economics. I wouldn't know how to translate a financial or economics paper, and no amount of "picking up" is going to change that. I would have to sit down and seriously study finance or economics for quite some time before I could make an attempt. And then I would have to learn the publishing formats and standards, which are completely different from those in science and medicine.

Work / Polish Canadian ESL job/student advice [78]


Indeed. If your goal is to make a career in translating, you don't need a degree in English, or any other language. You just need to know both languages very well, and, more importantly, be rather well versed in the subject matter to be translated.

The best paying jobs go to experienced native-English speakers who have a background in a specialty field like science, medicine, law, finance or technology, or have tons of experience in writing for the marketing and advertising industries. In any case, you need to be experienced in writing publish-ready copy for academic journals and grant proposals. Other types of translating do not pay well at all.

I'm a pathologist and clinical research scientist, with a background in industrial and environmental biology. During my time in Poland, I translated over 500 scientific articles and 10 scientific books from Polish to English, mostly in agriculture, botany and medicine. I had practically no competition. If you don't have a specialty field, then the best jobs are beyond your reach.

I often advise engineers that, if they want to make decent money and have a fun and exciting career, they should go where R&D dollars flow in wide rivers. The same with translating. Become proficient in the language of the well-heeled sectors of the economy. Making money is a lot easier where there is money to be made.

If you want to improve your Polish, then read your butt off. During my first three years in Poland, I spent forty or fifty hours a week reading Polish like it was going out of style. It was my default state. Plenty of books that you can download for free from the internet.

As for studying in Poland, you are going to get a lot more out of it if you study in Polish. Courses taught in English are nowhere near as good. Get your Polish up to snuff by reading like a maniac first, and then revisit the studying-in-Poland idea in a couple of years. Put aside a nest egg so that you can study and live without working. There's no hurry,

Law / Polish certificate exam level B1 and institution / few questions about the Polish language [39]

Non-EU citizens are not allowed to enter Poland to seek employment. It is specifically forbidden for anyone on a tourist or visitors visa to seek employment during their stay. Just like in the US or Canada. Are you sure that Germany allows non-EU citizens to enter Germany to seek work? That does not sound right.

Law / Polish certificate exam level B1 and institution / few questions about the Polish language [39]

@Braveheart16

I see. I was thrown by the word "run".

As far as the government is concerned, it doesn't matter how you learn Polish, or where you take lessons, or even if you take lessons at all. All they care about is the result of the actual proficiency test. Whether any private schools offer lessons specifically geared to the government exam, I don't know. There is nothing to stop them from doing so, or anyone else for that matter. I doubt that there are any "government approved" courses, though.

As far as I know, there is no "accreditation" for schools to teach language lessons preparing for the FCE or similar exams, either. Any school or individual can provide that service. Again, the testing authorities do not require any course to take the exam. They just perform the competency test. How you became competent is no concern of theirs.


There is a bit of a scam element to these tests. But the main element is to discourage people who are unwilling or unable to pass the exam to apply for citizenship. It is another hoop to jump through to weed out what they consider the non-serious applicants. The approximately 1000 PLN price tag is more designed to scare them off rather than make serious money for the government. It's not like Poland is inundated with applicants for citizenship.

The British tests are a bit more scammy, especially the FCE, which was marketed really hard in the early 2000s. There is no real value in examining students at that level. Certainly none that would justify the rather hefty price tag. I always discouraged anyone from wasting their time and money on these exams unless they were specifically required by an employer or academic institution, a situation that I never encountered. Neither of my students who went on to study at LSE and Kings were required to take any language exam beyond matura, and the same for my students who went to study in the States.

The bigger fleecing is done by the language schools, who prolong the learning process to maximize their profits. You could easily prepare someone to take the FCE in a year, but they stretch it out over four or five years by discouraging independent study and focusing solely on in-class time. Why kill the goose that lays the golden egg before it's time. I also discourage anyone from taking lessons at a private language school. Why pay big bucks for something you can do a lot better and faster for little cost on your own at home?

Life / Poland safe for a Greek? [93]


Not really. He is at greater risk in tourist areas because of pickpockets. Poles rarely go looking for trouble unless they are drunk.


I took one of my Polish students to Kraków for the weekend. We were in Nowy Targ, a small square off the main square, and there was a troupe of acrobats performing. My student was rather short, so he climbed up a lamp post to get a better view over the crowd of spectators. After a while, he jumped down and whispered to me, "I think I'm the only Polish person here".

News / Poland's economic future? [294]

@Dirk diggler

It's a hoax, silly boy.

News / Poland's economic future? [294]

At the bottom of the article you linked to is this update:

"Update:

According to a thorough investigation conducted by Moroccan news website Ledesk, the incident, which was widely reported by Moroccan and international media, turned out to be a hoax."

The article on Sweden also sounds like a hoax. The pictures are from the Daily Mail, and probably the rest of the story, too.

You need to be more judicious in your choice of news sources.

Life / Poland safe for a Greek? [93]

No, you won't have any problem. As long as you stay away from drunk people, you'll be fine. In Poland, trouble, especially physical violence, almost always comes from drunk people. I guess it's the same in Greece. Avoid them like the plague. A bigger problem is thieves and pickpockets, so be on your guard and keep your money and valuables in a safe place that is hard for them to get to. In short, behave like you would in a touristy area in Greece, and you'll be fine.

Law / Polish certificate exam level B1 and institution / few questions about the Polish language [39]

@Braveheart16

That doesn't help the OP, who wanted to be able to use a certificate from a private language school instead of the one issued by the government.. The schedule for exams would still be the same. It's not like he can walk into any language school and take the exam when he wants. He has to take it on the dates dictated by the government, and under the watchful eye of a government examiner, not a school employee. And no, it is not possible, as you said, to find a school that is able to "run" the state exam. The school's role would be strictly limited to providing a physical space, and school employees would not be allowed to participate in the process.

I think your under the impression that private language schools are authorized to administer tests like the FCE, CPE or IELTS. They are not. They just provide the space, and the British Council arranges for their own certified examiners to administer the test. The same for tests in German or French. The examiners are not school employees.

Also, you have to take these exams on certain dates, two or four times a year or so, and not whenever you like. The school plays no role in the exam except for providing the physical space.

Genealogy / Searching for Winskowski genealogy [6]

Also, there is a high probability that all living and recently living Winskowski's are direct descendants of Julius, and a good probability that he was the first person to use that surname with that spelling, which is almost certainly a Germanified spelling of the far more common Polish surname Więckowski.

If not, then there is an extremely high probability that they are direct descendants of Julius's father, and a high probability that he was the first to use that surname.

If not, then it is an extremely high probability that they are direct descendants of Julius's grandfather, and that he was the first to use that surname.

Also, some may have emigrated to Germany, especially after the war. There is a Henrik Winskowski that worked on the Russian rocket team after the war, and his nationality is listed as German on this site:

astronautix.com/w/winskowski.html

Chances are he was a grandson or grandnephew of Julius. Chances are that he was forcibly deported to Russia after the war to work on the rocket team, like so many others. Chances are also, unfortunately, high that he disappeared off the face of the earth without a trace, again, like so may others like him. There is a chance, however, that he might have been repatriated to Poland or East Germany, or that he might have settled in Russia.

Genealogy / Searching for Winskowski genealogy [6]


It's just a very, very rare surname, with only about two dozen people in Poland bearing that name. On the good side, it belongs to only a single family, so anyone with that surname is related to you within four or five generations at the most. Also, it almost certainly originated in a single concrete place near Ruda Ślaska in southern Poland. People with that surname still live there today, and finding the parish where records on the family are kept will be easy.

Law / Polish certificate exam level B1 and institution / few questions about the Polish language [39]

@delphiandomine

What does your post have to do with anything I wrote?

What does your post have to do with anything I wrote? Or with anything the OP asked? Private language schools do not have the authority to issue state certificates, and never will be granted that authority. Any certificate issued by a private language school is completely worthless for this purpose. And no, there hasn't been, and never will be, any change in the law regarding this.

Whether private institutions can serve as testing centers is another matter entirely.

Classifieds / Moving to Krakow from London - Can anyone help to move my stuff? [5]

Post an ad for a man-with-a-van on your local advertising sites. Or browse the ads for men-with-vans and call around to see whether they are willing to haul to Poland.

Or you can rent a van and drive it yourselves. Call around for best rates.

Work / Sikh coming to Poland with over 14 years experience in Customer Service and running operations [30]

The OP is not a graduate of a Polish school. He's still in India and would need a work permit. Chances of him getting one for an entry level position are nil.

Law / Polish certificate exam level B1 and institution / few questions about the Polish language [39]

It's still not going to happen. Private language schools do not have the authority to issue state certificates, and never will be granted that authority.

Real Estate / Inheritance law in Poland - My brother refuses to share profit from apartment sale [8]

Sounds like a question for an attorney, not for a bunch of anonymous bozos on some random internet forum. Don't forget: free advice is worth every penny you pay for it. In other words, nothing at all.

Law / Polish certificate exam level B1 and institution / few questions about the Polish language [39]

That's not going to happen. The potential for fraud is far too high.

Work / Sikh coming to Poland with over 14 years experience in Customer Service and running operations [30]


And you have to have a well-thought-out, concrete plan of action that is firmly grounded in cold, hard reality, and a viable Plan B as well. Rose-tinted optimism is the second leading cause of failure among expats who come to Poland. Right behind "love".

Work / Sikh coming to Poland with over 14 years experience in Customer Service and running operations [30]


Then it will be hard for you to find any job. Job opportunities for Indians in Poland are very scarce indeed outside of the IT field. Unless you have some serious higher level qualifications and lots of experience in the quantitative aspects of high finance, you basically have no chance.


Poland is not the sort of country that treats sentimental people well at all. It has a way of chewing them up and spitting them out. Poland will slap you in the face with cold, hard reality. There is nothing romantic or sentimental about living in Poland. It's not for dreamers.

If you mean you want to be with some "girlfriend" that you met online, then grow up. Bull$hit like that is for silly teenagers, not for responsible adults. Take a cold shower.

Work / What is the average accounting/auditing salary in Poland? [42]


Indeed. You should ask yourself why, if you are more valuable to them in Warsaw, they want to pay you less, rather than more.

Law / Polish certificate exam level B1 and institution / few questions about the Polish language [39]

It's a state exam. A certificate from a private language school would be worthless.

Law / 'Karta Pobytu' & long-term visa [27]

No. You have to find a job BEFORE you come to Poland. You can get a karta pobytu only AFTER you come to Poland. There is no visa for Indians that allows them to come to Poland first and then look for a job. You have to have a job BEFORE you come.

Work / What is the average accounting/auditing salary in Poland? [42]

It's not the pay cut per say that will hurt you. The thing that is going to seal or sour the deal for you is the rise or drop in savings potential, or how much you can put away at the end of the month into your savings/retirement/kids' college fund or how much is available to pay of debts, including mortgage fees and college loans.

Since, at the moment, you do have any information about how much you can expect to earn, you will need to get that sorted out before you sit down and do the math to calculate your saving potential. Beware of anyone who tells you that the cost of living is very low in Warsaw, and remember that your cost of living will be substantially higher than that of a native Pole. You don't speak the language, you don't know the culture, and you don't have a network of family and friends.

Do the math, but my guess is that a 30% pay raise is going to have a negative impact on your bottom-line savings potential, in spite of the lower cost of living. But you are going to have to do the math yourself.

Work / Sikh coming to Poland with over 14 years experience in Customer Service and running operations [30]


Also bear in mind that any jobs of this sort would be snapped up by Ukrainians. The chances of an Indian or Pakistani landing an entry-level IT job in Poland are nil.