Er was eens...
I was born in a small, semi-rural mining town in Northumberland, UK. My parents took a pretty free-range approach to childrearing, so I spent my days romping around unsupervised in the local woods, climbing trees and paddling in the river.
I loved the outdoors, but my true passion was books. Even as a toddler, I was obsessed with words – reading them, writing them 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. Lessons were held in the Classics classroom, hidden away in at the top of an old, redbrick building that had once been a grammar school. To enter, you had to find the almost-invisible entrance to a dark, cramped staircase curling up to a room in the eaves. It felt like something out of 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 at a small but well-regarded teacher training college. I focused on poetry and early years reading – both of which, in their own way, involve decoding and interpreting language. I loved teaching and graduated with honours, but fate had something else in mind for me.
How I became a translator
Instead of becoming a primary school teacher, after graduating, I moved to the Netherlands, where I lived for sixteen years, working first at Time Warner, then at The American Book Center, a huge, independent bookshop in the centre of Amsterdam. It was a dream job – reading, selling, buying, talking and writing about books all day. I wrote for the newsletter, website and social media, and contributed a quarterly review feature for a national magazine. Along the way, I built a deep understanding of Dutch language and culture.
I accidentally fell into translation when a colleague recommended me to two authors who were unhappy with the translation of their Dutch book about IVF. Knowing I had a way with words 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 who was now working for a 'Big Five' publisher asked me for a favour. They needed sample chapters of a Dutch romantic thriller translated in time for the London Book Fair but couldn't find a translator in time. I agreed, assuming a real translator would redo them if the book sold. When the publisher asked me to translate the whole book, I was stunned. Did that mean I was actually good at this? Could I turn it into a job?
At the time, I wasn't sure. I didn't even have a desk! Working in an armchair on a tiny laptop, I split my screen between the source text and Word, translating twelve hours a day, seven days a week for four months. I loved every single minute of it. I knew this was what I wanted to do.
Since then, I've also translated all of Jeroen Windmeijer's bestselling Peter de Haan mysteries, a commemorative book for the much-loved Dutch housewares manufacturer Mepal, a medical memoir, and a whole range of other types of texts!
Eventually, I realised that a split screen on a small laptop was not the most efficient way to work. I cleared out the spare room, set up an office with three screens and a shelf full of reference books, and started taking myself seriously as a language professional.
I learned about CAT tools and earned some Trados certifications to prove I know my way around Studio. I also gained professional proofreading qualifications from the CIEP and the Publishing Training Centre, 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.
When I'm not working with words, I spend time with my partner and son in our wonky old house in a small town in Durham, surrounded by rolling countryside. I walk a bit, read a bit, crochet a bit... and I still romp around unsupervised in the local woods.