Native English speaker, born in England and resident in Germany for over 35 years (studied German at Reading University in England and Freiburg, Germany, graduating in 1975).

Worked as an in-house translator and English trainer in the oil and gas industry in Hannover, Germany for over 20 years; had two full-time translating jobs prior to this in a mechanical engineering company in Bremen mostly involved in work for the local shipyards (construction of cranes and ships' deckmachinery) but also with a large foreign customer base (1978-80) and a scientific research institute in Hamburg belonging to the Ministry of Transport (1980-82).

I was forced to take early retirement at the end of 2004 and now work for various translation agencies in Germany, together with English training at local companies.

I also do translations from French, Spanish, Italian and Dutch (in this descending order of competence) into English and sometimes from English and French into German (draft quality), in a variety of technical, commercial and legal fields.

Originally became involved in translating while working as an English teacher from 1975 to 1978 at a language school in Bremen, the bulk of whose activity was foreign language tuition for adults in evening classes.

The school shed its teaching activities and changed its location several years ago and is, as before, a major translation agency in the Bremen area. Towards the end of my stint I became more and more involved in large technically-oriented jobs for the local aircraft and construction industries together with commercial and legal material for various local companies, solicitors and patent attorneys.

During my in-house employment in Hannover I continuously updated my company's terminology database (German/English, English/German); by the time I left it contained about 20,000 terms.

I generally use the standard Microsoft Office package plus one or two of the more common applications.

I have also taken on hundreds of jobs in several fields for agencies and private clients over the years.

Current price: € 1.20-1.30 per line for direct clients (€ 1.00-1.10 for agencies) for all language combinations listed above, subject to negotiation depending on urgency/difficulty of source text.