I was born in Newcastle and am currently an MA translation student at Newcastle University.

I graduated from Northumbria University in 2013 (across the road from Newcastle) with a degree French and Business and started a graduate job in the finance department of a multinational consumer goods company. After deciding this wasn’t the right career path for me, I decided to leave my full-time job and pursue a career as a freelance translator. This was a tough time (to say the least!), having no clients or experience, but I finally found an agency willing to take me on. Having worked on similar texts for over a year (beauty/fashion/tourism), I felt that a further year of study on my CV could only help improve my chances of succeeding in the translation industry and being given more varied texts. I am now almost half way through my course and am hoping to work either as an in-house or freelance translator on completion of the programme.

I was first interested in attending the ITI conference after spotting a link that another translator had posted about the event on the ‘CPD for translators and Interpreters’ Facebook page and can’t wait to meet like-minded professionals who have similar interests and goals. I’m especially looking forward to Percy Balemans’ presentation on ‘Fashionable Translations’, due to my previous translating experience and personal interest in this area, as well as the ‘Translating a book – by two book virgins’ talk.