About
I have been working in field of linguistics and languages since 1997, always deeply passionate about language for as long as I can remember. I love analysing the structure and evolution of language and how, perhaps, it shapes people.
Learning Through Love
I learned Spanish very quickly and, for the most part, from having to speak it in order to communicate with my Dominican wife. In fact, we mostly continue to speak Spanish about the house.
The Art of Translation
I find working on a complex translation to be quite therapeutic in a possibly strange way; getting the meaning across and the context just right from source to target language is a knotty puzzle I like to unpick.
A Life-Changing Moment
I’ll tell you a story, many years ago, when I first moved to America, I landed a job near the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Nearby were the packing and processing plants for the locally important fishing industry. The menial work there was done by migrant workers, mostly from Latin America. It was exhausting, badly paid, and left them with little hope of improvement.
I got a job with a foundation that helped their children, teaching them English. I have never had a more enthusiastic or receptive audience! They knew I was their chance at a better life. The fulfillment and sense of purpose that gave me is impossible to describe but for the first time in my professional life, I was doing something truly worthwhile. I could change lives, directly and for the better.