Caroline<\/a>, and I\u2019m a French-to-English translator living in Mayenne, in north-western France with my husband and teenage son. My two grown-up stepchildren live locally and I\u2019m also lucky enough to have two very small step-grandchildren!<\/p>\nI grew up in Biggin Hill (on the Kent-London border). I spent all my holidays with my grandparents in Guernsey, which although English-speaking today, has a strong historical French influence that sparked my interest for the language. I studied International Management with French at the University of Bath, choosing the course mainly because it didn\u2019t involve French literature! I spent my third year working as a PA in Paris, and fell in love with France. I\u2019ve been here pretty much ever since.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m a member of both the SFT and the ITI, and I coordinate the ITI\u2019s International Network.<\/p>\n
Do you translate, interpret, or both? What are your areas of specialism?
\n<\/strong>I translate. I used to do some liaison interpreting locally, mainly for house purchases, but decided a few years ago to focus solely on translation. Having studied management at university and worked for various companies for 12 years before I became a translator, I focused on business translations from the beginning. Obviously though, it\u2019s a vast area, and saying \u201cI specialise in business\u201d doesn\u2019t give clients a very precise idea of what you do. I toyed with various more specific specialisations before settling on financial communications and investor relations. Over the last couple of years, that has naturally come to include a large amount of work in corporate social responsibility, which I find very interesting.<\/p>\nWhy did you decide to get into translation or interpreting?
\n<\/strong>At school (back in the dark ages, long before the internet), I told my careers teacher I wanted to be an interpreter. \u201cImpossible!\u201d she said, because I was only doing one language A-Level. With no other sources of information at hand, I naively believed her and set my sights on international business instead. After a brief spell as a corporate graduate trainee in the UK, I spent a decade running children\u2019s holiday centres in France for a well-known travel operator. My job involved a large amount of translation and interpreting, and I completed a translation course through the University of London in Paris. By this time, I had two young stepchildren and a tiny baby. The hours I was working simply weren\u2019t compatible with family life, and the yearning to make a living turning French into English had never really gone away. The time had come to strike out on my own as a translator.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s your favourite type of project?
\n<\/strong>My favourite projects are corporate communications translations for regular clients. I love it when I know the client\u2019s business so well that I can write with confidence and feel that I\u2019m doing a really good job, because I\u2019m familiar with the history of the business, their projects and the terminology and tone of voice they use.<\/p>\nI\u2019m currently writing (rather than translating) a sustainability report for a regular client, interviewing various people across the company and writing articles about their initiatives. It\u2019s absolutely fascinating, especially as I might be speaking to staff in Australia in the morning, Ethiopia at lunchtime and Argentina in the afternoon.<\/p>\n
What do you do outside of translation or interpreting?
\n<\/strong>If I\u2019m not at my desk, there\u2019s a good chance you\u2019ll find me at the swimming pool. I\u2019m the secretary of our local swimming club, and also a member of the Masters section, swimming a couple of kilometres two or three times a week. My son swims competitively for the club, and also coaches the younger children. At the weekend, there\u2019s often a meet to organise, and timekeeping to do. We joke that the car could find its own way to the pool!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Who are you? 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