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Get in touch!
After more than 10 years on the scene, I come with:
š real-world subject expertise
š proper eye for detail, perfected over the years
š care for the words I write
āØ a dusting of the right tech to make my work even better
š 100% client retention
I can legitimately be proud of that, don't you think?
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So where did it all begin? š
It was a dull, still and snowy weekend in February 2011. My husband was away for the month on a professional development course and I was looking after our new kitten š¼ (which consisted of screaming ‘no’ every so often š).
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I was bored… š„±ā
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So looking for excitement and some extra cash, I took on my very first professional translation project: a 10,000-word Belgian court document about a number of companies who had made a concerted effort to bankrupt one of their competitors by refusing to supply it with compressed air (which worked a treat, judging from press reports a little later).
The most shocking thing: I’d never done a professional translation before. The only thing I knew was I was better at translating than the rest of them (bit of a Byron there š).
Fast forward 13 years and I've built a successful career translating for the arts, culture, history and clinical trial sectors with a perfect client retention track record.
Arts & culture
What feelings words trigger is important for visitors’ experiences as they add to the atmosphere curators want to emulate, the concept artists have in mind when they create.
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Ever since I was a little girl 35 years ago, my aspiring-artist dad dragged me along to exhibitions and historical sites where we read *everything* š. I even had a mini Grand Tour at the age of 13! It admittedly was hit-and-miss at the time, but it did give me a firm understanding of art pieces against their historical and economic background. Because no art is an island entire of itself…
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Over the years I’ve worked on translations about religious art and relics, Gothic- and Renaissance-revival architecture and what is essentially the Flemish Arts and Crafts movement, architectural revamps such as the iconic Boekentoren Art Deco library of Ghent University, historical medicine and modern art museums and historical sites.
Patient materials & Clinical trials
Information empowers patients to understand their condition and take their treatment seriously. This needs empathy and the right words.
All too often, patient materials are blunt, overly clinical, difficult, and anxiety-inducing. So patients run away screaming and are told ‘not to Google’. Though the information they get most of the time leaves them with more questions than answers and makes them think doctors have something to hide.
Believing things could be a lot better, I got into the clinical trial and patient materials sector in 2021, where I translate into plain empathetic language, in line with regulatory requirements.
Craft
food & drink
I took my first sip of Orval Trappist beer on my first birthday (yes, there is photographic evidence of this) and made the obligatory Sunday afternoon fruit or custard tart together with my grandfather while the rest of the family was at church.
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When we went to Italy when I was 3, I had a tiny bit of wine with my food as usual but the pizza took too long to arrive... I refused to eat at this point (evidently I felt funny) and ended up slaloming home, bumping into the chairs and tables as I left the restaurant.
Enjoying food and drink has always been part of my life.
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Because Belgians truly believe no party has been fun, no holiday has been adequate, indeed no city is worth going to if there is no delicious food to enjoy.
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We love our beer, we adore our chocolate, but above all we need it to be handled with love.
This is why I relish working for craft food & drink companies and family businesses to bring my Belgian passion to their international prospective customers.
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