Who are you? Please introduce yourself <\/strong><\/p>\nHello, I\u2019m Helene, a French-to-English (and sometimes Swedish-to-English) translator who lives in Barcelona for the sunshine and relaxed vibe.<\/p>\n
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\u2019s left for Uni in England, but I\u2019m still here \ud83d\ude0a<\/p>\n
I fell into translation by lucky accident about 15 years ago and love it (I\u2019ve always been an inveterate word nerd and now I get paid for it \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n
I\u2019m an MITI and at the 2021 ITI conference I squared up against Juliet Baur in the French-to-English Translation Slam. I\u2019m also a member of the SFT.<\/p>\n
Do you translate, interpret, or both? What are your areas of specialism?<\/strong><\/p>\nI only translate (I like working at home, alone, and having the time to hone a text); my work often veers into transcreation as it\u2019s usually selling a univers <\/em>as they say in French.<\/p>\nWhen I started out, I quickly gravitated towards the creative end of the spectrum, and all these years later \u2013 despite the onward march of AI and all those agencies eating each other \u2013 I like still getting the odd random request from my old agency PMs, when they have a job that requires a freewheeling imagination.<\/p>\n
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\u2019 manifestos and marketing\/merchandising assets. I\u2019m also a dab hand at making annual reports, sustainability reports and the like more digestible.<\/p>\n
My background in advertising, plus lengthy psychotherapeutic training, means I always have an eye on the \u2018angle\u2019 \u2013\u00a0how to make a text resonate with its audience.<\/p>\n
I see my role as a balance between being an invisible vector for my clients\u2019 message, and guiding them around the pitfalls of communicating in English today.<\/p>\n
Why did you decide to get into translation or interpreting?<\/strong><\/p>\nInexplicably, my parents put me in the French Lyc\u00e9e 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 and I\u2019ve never looked back.<\/p>\n
I love practicing the art of writing, and since I\u2019ve no burning desire to share my own thoughts with the world, I\u2019m delighted when clients pay me money to convey their <\/em>message through words.<\/p>\nThis is what I was born to do, and in a parallel universe I would\u2019ve gone straight into it after school, but it simply wasn\u2019t on my radar then.<\/p>\n
What\u2019s your favourite type of project?<\/strong><\/p>\nMy favourite gig is a biannual men\u2019s fashion magazine out of Paris that I\u2019ve 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 \u2013 interviews, reportage, fashion notes, styling tips, etc.<\/p>\n
I love having the chance to write in current vernacular but equally enjoy turning out flowing classic prose when it\u2019s called for.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
What do you do outside of translation or interpreting?<\/strong><\/p>\nOutside 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\u2019ve \u2018graduated\u2019 to Improv Singing, which is even more fun as you make up random songs on the spot, and I\u2019ve discovered I like to sing (I enjoy karaoke now and then, too).<\/p>\n
Also, I like to keep fit, so Pilates features heavily in my weekly schedule, and I\u2019ll 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Helene Tammik \u2018sells dreams\u2019 for clients in the luxury, fashion and cultural spheres, translating, transcreating and copywriting mainly from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1971,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"rank_math_lock_modified_date":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"default","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"default","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meet-our-members"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1974"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1981,"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1974\/revisions\/1981"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/iti-frenchnetwork.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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