Helene Tammik ‘sells dreams’ for clients in the luxury, fashion and cultural spheres, translating, transcreating and copywriting mainly from French but also from Swedish into English.
Who are you? Please introduce yourself
Hello, I’m Helene, a French-to-English (and sometimes Swedish-to-English) translator who lives in Barcelona for the sunshine and relaxed vibe.
I grew up in Sweden, then spent a few decades in London working in advertising and marketing, until the arrival of my son prompted a radical rethink. I wanted him to grow up at least bilingual, and ended up moving us to Provence so he could go to the Steiner-Waldorf school near Avignon. When he hit his teenage years, we decided to relocate to Barcelona for a more cosmopolitan life and now he’s left for Uni in England, but I’m still here 😊
I fell into translation by lucky accident about 15 years ago and love it (I’ve always been an inveterate word nerd and now I get paid for it 😉
I’m an MITI and at the 2021 ITI conference I squared up against Juliet Baur in the French-to-English Translation Slam. I’m also a member of the SFT.
Do you translate, interpret, or both? What are your areas of specialism?
I only translate (I like working at home, alone, and having the time to hone a text); my work often veers into transcreation as it’s usually selling a univers as they say in French.
When I started out, I quickly gravitated towards the creative end of the spectrum, and all these years later – despite the onward march of AI and all those agencies eating each other – I like still getting the odd random request from my old agency PMs, when they have a job that requires a freewheeling imagination.
Most of my work now is for direct clients in fashion, jewellery, travel & lifestyle, and I do copywriting as well. I specialise in catchy editorial texts like social media posts, press releases, consumer magazines, artists’ manifestos and marketing/merchandising assets. I’m also a dab hand at making annual reports, sustainability reports and the like more digestible.
My background in advertising, plus lengthy psychotherapeutic training, means I always have an eye on the ‘angle’ – how to make a text resonate with its audience.
I see my role as a balance between being an invisible vector for my clients’ message, and guiding them around the pitfalls of communicating in English today.
Why did you decide to get into translation or interpreting?
Inexplicably, my parents put me in the French Lycée when I was growing up in Stockholm, so I got an excellent grounding in old-school French as well as speaking Swedish (and English with my mum). I also devoured classic English and American literature like Jane Austen and F. Scott Fitzgerald in my youth.
So in my head I was always thinking about how I might express the same concept in one language or another, but I had no idea there might be a job in it.
Then when I was bringing up my son in France and working part-time teaching business English, I made friends with a translator who helped me get my foot in the door – and I’ve never looked back.
I love practicing the art of writing, and since I’ve no burning desire to share my own thoughts with the world, I’m delighted when clients pay me money to convey their message through words.
This is what I was born to do, and in a parallel universe I would’ve gone straight into it after school, but it simply wasn’t on my radar then.
What’s your favourite type of project?
My favourite gig is a biannual men’s fashion magazine out of Paris that I’ve been translating for the last four years or so. I do the whole thing, so I get to flex my linguistic muscles across the whole gamut of writing styles – interviews, reportage, fashion notes, styling tips, etc.
I love having the chance to write in current vernacular but equally enjoy turning out flowing classic prose when it’s called for.
I also love the transcreation challenges that agencies sometimes throw at me, especially around Christmas time when all the big corporations are trying to come up with novel greetings. Things like translating rap lyrics for a corporate Christmas song, or seasonal messages with lots of clever wordplay.
What do you do outside of translation or interpreting?
Outside of work, my main creative outlet is doing improv (terrifying and fun in equal measure). I started three years ago as a means of self-development; it really helps with confidence and feeling equal to any situation. Now I’ve ‘graduated’ to Improv Singing, which is even more fun as you make up random songs on the spot, and I’ve discovered I like to sing (I enjoy karaoke now and then, too).
Also, I like to keep fit, so Pilates features heavily in my weekly schedule, and I’ll usually head up to the mountains for a long sociable hike every weekend. Oh, and wine. I like wine a lot. Catalunya is fabulous for wine, and hiking, and many other things.
