A particular approach
In my experience, technical translations are often expected to be handled as cut-and-dried deliverables. You write a source text, send it to the translator, a translation comes back and you use it without any further ado. Simple.
But I am here for the cases where you need the quality that we can only acheive in close personal cooperation. I want to really understand your technical story and get to know the communicative purpose of the translation: to do this, we will often meet in person. It could be that when we work together, what I contribute is not a pure translation of a finalized source text, but more of a combination of translating and editing and copywriting with the goal of optimizing the German and English versions individually and in relation to each other. Most likely, we will sit down together and discuss the finished translation – because often it will turn out that it’s not as finished as I thought: some misunderstanding is still lurking in it and needs to get ironed out.
This way of working takes more effort, and we will have to budget for prices that cover my process. We will need a good mutual understanding of the benefit that you expect from my work, and I need you to understand the value of my work based on that benefit. Translations can be quick and cheap, or even free. What I’m offering is at the other end of the scale: working in personal dialogue with you, and caring for the job as a human writing for humans.
If that’s already exactly what you’re looking for, I’d love to hear from you. If you’re not quite sure whether my price fits your budget, I’m always willing to begin with small steps, so that you have a chance to experience whether my approach generates the appropriate value for you.
Are we a good fit for each other?
For you to get the benefit from my way of working, we need a certain level of mutual understanding. Have a look through the following questions. Anything you can answer with “yes” is a good sign:
- Do you have a clear message? An excellent product? A unique service?
- Does your thing make a real contribution to sustainability?
- Is your work area related to my subject background (as a biochemist – so, for example, medicine or pharmaceuticals)?
- Have you developed something technical or scientific that is as elegant as it is profound?
- Or is your product the kind of thing that nobody really gets excited about, but everybody relies on to just work, without misunderstandings or cockups, and which should present a friendly but unobtrusive interface?
- Do you take care of the people you work for, or the people you work with, in a special way, and do you want to make that come across in writing?
- Do you and I share a dislike of bullshit*?
*greenwashing, pseudoscience, CSR window-dressing …
Past projects
Here you can see a selection of projects I’ve done over the years.
Interested? Contact me for a free first consultation!