Hello from London!

After more than 20 years living and working in this great city I think I qualify as a Londoner even if I never managed to lose that American accent I acquired as a child going to school in Germany. Yes, I know it sounds confusing, but when I was six my parents sent me to one of those “international” schools run by Americans for U.S. expat kids. So I spent the next 12 years immersed in Little America and ended up with a second native tongue - English.

Now I specialize as a German<>English conference interpreter and translator, but I also work with French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. I spoke Italian growing up as my father is Italian, which also explains my very un-Germanic sounding name. The other languages I picked up over the years studying, travelling and living in other countries, such as Brazil where I spent three sunny years. Despite my language skills it took me a while before I embarked on my current career. In my previous professional incarnation I was a financial journalist for leading news media, and I still do part-time work for The Wall Street Journal/Dow Jones Newswires. This background has provided me with my areas of specialization in translation, which are economics, finance, business and current affairs. I have been translating part-time for more than 10 years, but I decided to go freelance only 3 years ago after completing my European Masters in Conference Interpreting.

The ITI Conference is a welcome excuse to get out of the house and meet new people. I’m not the biggest fan of working from home, which is probably also one reason I prefer interpreting to translation, and I cherish the networking and socializing opportunities the conference has to offer, as well as its educational benefits. I will be attending the conference only on Saturday, but I’m arriving in time for the drinks and dinner on the Friday night! I will pack as much as I can into one day and look forward to attending some of the presentations on interpreting but also the talks on Business Buddies and the Translator’s Invisible Toolkit. Most of all, I look forward to meeting you all, and in the meantime you can always find me at www.sdl-languages.com, as well as on Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+.

See you in Newcastle!