I am a qualified translator for German and English with two translation degrees. I was awarded my first degree (State-Certified Translator) in 1964 by the former Advanced College for Interpreters and Translators of the City of Cologne. In 2006, I completed further studies and received my second degree (Graduate Translator) from the University of Applied Sciences Cologne.

My translating experience began with a two-year in-house position with a chemical company. Since 1978, I have translated on a freelance basis for a wide variety of companies, a number of departments of the University of Cologne and private individuals. I also worked as a freelance translator over a period of two years for a well-known translating agency in Cologne, where I was entrusted with translation work into English and into German covering a wide range of specialist fields, in particular technical, legal and business texts. For a number of years, I worked as a freelance translator for a large automobile manufacturer, during which time I acquired extensive experience in the translation of texts concerned with automotive engineering and production. In addition to my considerable translating experience, I can also look back on 28 years of teaching English as a foreign language at private language schools, adult education centres and a number of companies. A large proportion of this work consisted of teaching translation to students preparing for examinations set by the German Chamber of Commerce.

I was born and raised in Cologne, Germany, and spent the first 31 years of my life in a German-speaking environment. For the past 41 years, I have lived in an exclusively English-speaking environment after meeting my English husband in 1977. A chemist by profession, he has been teaching English in Germany since 1977. Although I am a native speaker of German by birth, I am also in the fortunate position of having acquired English as a second native language in the second half of my life. Any translation work into English which I undertake is done in close collaboration with my husband, thus ensuring fluency of style, grammatical correctness and idiomatic expressiveness.