Ever since my schooldays, I have been fascinated by languages, the different ways in which they work, and the challenges of translation. My father was of German origin and so added another linguistic dimension to the French, Latin and Greek that I was already learning at school. Even before I went to university, where I eventually graduated in French as well as English, I had begun to study other languages too, such as Russian, on my own initiative.

< b >I have been a translator in professional earnest - both freelance and in-house - since the mid-1980s and built up a competence in a dozen or so source languages, as diverse as Spanish and Hebrew, German and Georgian. Thanks to a job in a London office where I regularly had to translate lists of goods and services in all the classes standardised by the Nice Agreement, I have acquired a very varied specialist vocabulary in these languages. On a more literary level, I have been engaged in an advisory capacity on a new translation (published on-line) of the Song of Songs from the Biblical Hebrew.< /b > I pride myself on delivering a high-quality service, utilising such technical developments in the field as TRADOS. Translation is a serious business, but I also find it fun.