About Me
Growing up in Franconia in the 1960s, I initially remained quite locally bound in the choice of my place of study, too. Thanks to the good connections of the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg's Department of English and American Studies to partner universities in the EU, however, I had the opportunity to spend an extended period as a guest student abroad. I was enrolled at the N.U.U. in Coleraine, Northern Ireland, for 15 months in total, doing research for my final paper about the Peace People and their role in the Northern Ireland Conflict. These extended stays abroad among English native speakers proved very useful for my later professional choice of becoming a translator. After several job-related way stations at Memmingen, Weißenburg, and Kulmbach, I returned to Erlangen, where I have now lived and worked as a freelance translator for more than 20 years.
Education
- Studies of English, History and Political Sciences for Secondary Education
at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg - Exchange student at the University of Ulster, Coleraine, for two terms
- 1992: Bavarian state examination for translators at the Institute for Foreign Languages and Area Studies
at Erlangen-Nuremberg University - 1996: state examination as secondary school teacher
- 2000: public appointment by the President of Nuremberg-Fuerth Regional Court
as sworn-in translator for the English language
Job experience
My first job in 1990 took me to the archive of Nürnberger Nachrichten, where I was introduced to state-of-the-art knowledge management for the editorial offices of a daily newspaper that already relied on electronic keywording and data management for information retrieval as much as rather traditional media storage in their image archive. While I was preparing for the state examination for translators, I worked in the Regulatory Affairs Department of an Erlangen-based healthcare company. In this job, I learnt to appreciate the importance of standardisation for the industry. From 1994 to 1996, I completed my teacher training at Nuremberg and Memmingen, and then worked as a teacher at a grammar school in Weißenburg, followed by a teaching assignment at a Waldorf school near Kulmbach. The experience gained during these 2 1/2 years, however, let me realize that I love languages, but not teaching them.
So, I applied for a post as salaried translator, got the job and returned to Erlangen in summer 1999, acquiring lots of field experience as technical translator and project manager in two Erlangen-based translation agencies until 2004, when I went freelance. Since then, I have translated content from the fields of electrical engineering, plant engineering and medical technology, both into English and into German. As I have alwys been keen to continuously expand my knowledge in the text types and subject areas I translated, my expertise in legal translation grew accordingly and now also comprises real-estate purchase contracts, delivery and maintenance agreements, articles of incorporation and by-laws as well as general business terms and conditions and interpretation services during notarizations. Besides purely technical descriptions or online help texts for electrical planning software, I have also translated training material for electrical designers, sales presentations, magazine articles and manuals for a global player's Technical Marketing Department that featured highly specialized technical topics from the world of electrical engineering.
Right from the beginning of my translatory activities, I have familiarized with the specific terminology related to the respective subject area. Besides employing translation memories, I have relied on electronic terminology management using tools such as Trados MultiTerm from early on. On the occasion of a BDÜ lecture on terminology, I got a contact into the world of terminology management for industrial customers. Thanks to my expertise in the field of electrical engineering, I was invited to participate in a multi-language terminology project, coordinated by Büro b3, and this is how I delved into systematic, normative terminology work for a Swiss manufacturer of special machinery for the food industry, creating definitions in German and English for their terminology database in 2016/17. Later I seized the opportunity to take up a part-time position with Büro b3 to immerse myself even more deeply in the multi-faceted aspects of terminology processing and maintenance. However, the conveyance of meaning from one language into another is what fascinates me most - so I decided in 2022 to return to a strictly project-related work and focus more on translating and interpreting again.
My hobbies and interests
Modern dance, early 20th century painting, film, contemporary history, Ireland, Denmark, cycling, hill walking.