About me

Translation

At the start of the new millennium my unwavering interest in languages motivated me to become a professional translator, and consequently I took a degree in translation at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, specialising in Russian and Polish. Over the past ten years I have expanded my terminological expertise in various spheres of business and law, particularly agriculture, foreign trade, taxation, criminal law, and international law.

My interests and qualifications make me ideally suited for translating texts on cultural policy, primarily those with relevance to the social sciences and humanities. Practical considerations play a key role here. As an aspect of intercultural contact, the translation process should not be understood as a linguistic or cultural transfer, but rather as something that establishes and consolidates relationships between cultures. Translation can be seen as communicating differences, ideally resulting in changes to both sides: what is being translated and what it is being translated with. In this respect, translation is more than just highly specialised textual work, it actually takes on the character of a reciprocal intercultural understanding, a process which, in terms of its political and cultural scope, has no pre-determined outcome.

As a consequence of market standardisation and the formation of political macrostructures, sectors are now emerging where languages are increasingly convergent. The dominance of English in business, communications and information technology promotes linguistic homogeneity. Indeed, there are those active in translation who even refer to neutralising cultural differences (see Cultural Neutrality in Translations). This trend may further the degree to which translation processes can be automated in certain textual genres such as technical handbooks. For culturally relevant texts, however, the globalisation of communication invariably presents translation with the challenge of detecting cultural differences behind what are purportedly universal codes. Thus, a good translation should have sought to reveal the untranslatable.