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Our Translators
The key to a good translation is matching the content and subject-matter of your document with a professional translator with appropriate experience.
This is where we come in. With over 10 years of experience in the translation business, we have had time to build an extensive database of professional mother-tongue translators offering a very wide variety of subject-specialisms.
Our translators all have at least 3 years experience as full-time professional translators. Although many of them are accredited members of the UK and European translator associations, this is not a guarantee of acceptance onto our database. All new applicants are asked to carry out a series of translation tests and are then trialled for 6 months with different types of assignment.
The list below gives you brief biographical details of a small cross section of our translators:
| David W - Italian and Portuguese > English |
After studying French and Italian at Cambridge University, David travelled to Brazil where he learned Portuguese and found a job as an in-house translator on a financial newspaper. This led to a job as a financial journalist with an American news agency, which allowed him to travel extensively around South America. Six years later he returned to the UK and sat the Institute of Linguists' Diploma in Translation exam from Portuguese into English, for which he received the Richard Lewis trophy. Since then he has worked full time as a freelance translator from Portuguese and Italian into English. David has worked on a number of projects for AST, including areas such as law, software and tractors, and recently translated texts for a new book on Brazilian footballing legend Pelé.
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| Noriko K - English > Japanese |
Since graduating from Tama Art University, Tokyo, with BA in art, Noriko has worked as a full-time freelance translator in England for more than 10 years after working in a translation agency in Tokyo for 1 year.
She specialises in technical translation, subjects such as IT (software localisation and hardware), automotive, engineering, and medical equipment manuals However, she also covers general subjects such as art, tourism and business documentation translation.
Noriko has several years of experience in TRADOS, a widely used translation memory and will soon become a member of the ITI.
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| Steve Y - French and German > English |
After completing his course in French and German at Nottingham University, Steve worked in Germany teaching English. It was during that period that his relationship with the German language and culture was cemented.
Steve moved into export sales with an industrial textile manufacturer in Huddersfield where he used his languages regularly for the next 12 years, making frequent trips across Europe, attending exhibitions in Hanover and Frankfurt. As the textile business began to decline, Steve started to take on an increasing amount of translation work and found that besides the pleasure of working with languages, he was thrilled to be using a wide variety of knowledge gained over the years in areas such as IT, sales and marketing and production.
Steve enjoys switching from translating health and safety guidelines one week to texts about the football World Cup the next!
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| Kate L - German, Swedish and French > English |
Kate studied German at Lancaster University and has extensive experience in the translation and software localisation industries. She spent 8 years as a project manager at a translation agency before taking the Institute of Linguists’ Diploma in translation in Swedish and becoming a freelance translator 5 years ago.
She feels that having experience of life on ‘the other side of the fence’ gives her a better understanding of clients’ expectations of a translator. Kate specialises in I.T., but she also works in a wide variety of other technical and commercial subject areas. She particularly enjoys translating marketing material, which allows her the opportunity to be more creative.
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| Silvia G - English > German |
Silvia left University in Germany with a degree in Business Studies in 1991 and after a 3 month placement in Oxford decided to stay in the UK.
Initially she worked in market research and then for various human rights organisations, running campaigns and writing marketing leaflets. Over a 10-year-stay in the UK she worked for some prestigious international institutions, including the United Nations Association, Oxford University and Nielsen Market Research.
In 1999 she acquired the Diploma in Translation and started working freelance as an English to German translator. Her first-hand experience in marketing and market research has proved invaluable. In 2001 she moved back to Germany, for a “dose of her own culture”, but she has just returned to the UK with her English husband.
“I love my job and thrive on the variety it brings,” she says. “I really enjoy being creative with words. The big challenge is to make the text sound totally natural, as if it had never been translated in the first place.”
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| Dr Y S Chan <> Traditional and Simplified Chinese |
Since graduating with her PhD from Nottingham Trent University, San has been working as a full-time translator in England, Hong Kong and China for more than 5 years. With her father being the Lincolnshire Police interpreter in the 90s, she had already set her mind on translation while she was still studying. During that time, she worked as a voluntary interpreter and translator for the UK public sectors. Even now, she still does occasional translations for charities. The most well-known piece was the Hong Kong SARS alert.
She covers a wide range of translation services and her particular strengths are in marketing and creative writing. These are precious skills especially with the growing EU-China trading relationship. A professional image is crucial to any business wishing to succeed in China.
In addition to possessing a wide range of terminology dictionaries, she also uses translation memory tools such as Trados and multi-term to support her high volume translation projects.
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