Er was eens...
I was born in a small, semi-rural mining town in Northumberland in the UK. My parents' childrearing approach was pretty free range, so I was allowed to romp around unsupervised in the local woods, climbing trees and paddling in the river. I liked being outdoors, but my real passion was books. I was obsessed with words even as a toddler, reading them, writing them, puzzling and playing with them.
At school, I excelled at English and enjoyed learning French, but when the French department at my high school proved lacking, I switched to Latin for GCSE. The Classics classroom was tucked away in a redbrick building that had once been a grammar school. To access it, you had to find the almost-hidden entrance to a set of dark, cramped stairs that curled up to a room in the building's eaves. It was a lot like Professor Sybill Trelawney's classroom in Harry Potter, and those lessons were just as magical to me.
How I nearly didn't become a translator
In the quiet Classics garret, I discovered that, rather than developing in isolation, languages evolved and branched off from each other and there are many links between them. At this point, I almost regretted ditching French for Latin because the nerdy thrill I got from seeing those connections made me think that translation would be a wonderful job. Sadly, there wasn't much need for Latin translators in rural Northumberland. This was the early 1990s when girls were still often pushed towards a narrow set of traditionally female careers.
So off I went to the Birmingham suburbs to train as an English teacher. I got a place at a small but well-regarded teacher training college where I focused on poetry and the early years reading curriculum. Both involve decoding and interpreting language, in a way. I loved teaching and graduated with honours, but fate had something else in store for me.
How I became a translator
After graduating, instead of becoming a primary school teacher, I relocated to The Netherlands, where I lived for the next sixteen years, working first at Time Warner and then at The American Book Center, a huge, independent bookshop in the centre of Amsterdam. As well as the usual – and less usual – bookselling activities, I wrote for the newsletter, website, and social media pages and provided a quarterly review feature for a national magazine. This wonderful job gave me opportunities to indulge my love of words by reading, selling, buying, talking, and writing about books all day long. And it allowed me to develop an excellent knowledge of the Netherlands' language and culture.
Despite those early daydreams in the garret, translating hadn't been something I pursued academically. I accidentally fell into it when a colleague recommended me to two authors who had had their Dutch book about IVF translated into English and weren't entirely satisfied with the results. My colleague knew that I could string words together pleasingly and had edited the travel guide Holland in a Hurry. She suggested that I might be able to 'fix' this book. And so I took a deep breath and dove into translation – or what I now know was revision – for the first time.
Later, after I moved back to the UK, another colleague asked me for a favour. She had left the bookstore to work for one of the 'Big Five' publishers, and they wanted to sell a new romantic thriller by a popular Dutch author on the English-speaking markets. They hadn't been able to find a translator for the sample chapters in time for the London Book Fair, and she asked if I would give it a go. I agreed, thinking I could make a decent stab at it to give potential buyers the gist. It wouldn't need to be perfect since a 'real' translator would retranslate those first few chapters if the book sold. I was surprised and delighted when the publisher asked me to translate the whole book. Did that mean I was actually good at this? Could I turn it into a job? I wasn't sure then. I didn't even have a desk! On a tight deadline, and knowing nothing about professional translation and how to make the task easier for myself, I worked in an armchair using a small laptop, splitting my screen between the source text and a Word document. It took over my life for four months, twelve hours a day, seven days a week. I loved every single minute of it. I knew that this was what I wanted to do.
Since then, I've translated all of Jeroen Windmeijer's bestselling Peter de Haan mysteries, and a commemorative book for the much-loved Dutch housewares manufacturer Mepal. And, of course, a whole lot of other sorts of texts!
Eventually, I realised that a split screen on a little laptop was possibly the least efficient way to work. I started to take myself seriously and put effort into becoming a language professional. I cleared out the spare room and set up an office with three screens and a shelf full of reference books. I discovered CAT tools and earned some Trados certificates to prove I know my way around Studio. I also gained a professional proofreading qualification, learned how to transcribe, and worked continuously to improve my Dutch language skills. I became a full member of the CIOL and was approved as a Proz.com Certified Pro. At the moment, I'm working my way through a recognised course in copywriting whenever I can squeeze it in between translating and life and getting a swotty kick from the row of straight As on my grade record.
When I'm not working with words, I enjoy spending time with my partner and son in our wonky old house in a town surrounded by beautiful rolling countryside in Durham. I walk a bit, read a bit, crochet a bit, and I still regularly romp around unsupervised in the local woods.