A native speaker of English, I was born in Japan and grew up in Germany, England and Ireland. I received my primary education in Frankfurt and London and went to secondary school in Dublin before graduating from the National University Ireland Ireland.

I can offer, first of all, excellent English language skills: I hold a first-class honours degree in English and have been published as a translator, author and film critic.

Although foreign language skills can be learned academically, there really is no substitute for spending time in demanding linguistic environments abroad. I currently live in Italy and have spent a total of 25 years in this country and Spain, working mainly as a professional translator, but also in other managerial-level multilingual environments, speaking, reading and writing in Italian, Spanish and Catalan. For example, in Barcelona I handled large-scale translation projects for the Fundació de la Caixa de Catalunya cultural foundation located in Gaudi's La Pedrera building, and was also a member of the editorial committees of a number publishing companies, including Mondadori. In Italy I worked as the international TV cooordinator for the 2005 World Skiing Championships.

I also spent some years as a professional translator in Dublin, mainly handling projects in the EU institutional area, where due to demand my main working languages were German, French and Spanish (German being one of the four subjects I studied at university-level for my degree).

Areas of expertise

Legal

• Contracts: general; purchase/sale agreements; real estate sales, leases; assignment of intellectual property rights; clinical trials agreements (GCP); mortgages, loans, sureties and guarantees; merger and demerger agreements; employment contracts; service-level agreements.
• Intellectual property: patents and trademarks filings, procedures and records; copyright and copyright notices; IP litigation, including opposition and annulment proceedings; IP jurisprudence and specialised articles.
• Wills, succession/inheritance law.
• Property registry and cadastral documents.
• Privacy law, personal data protection, including website notices and disclaimers.
• Divorces and family matters.
• Legal correspondence, cease & desist letters, formal notices, notices to comply.
• Civil and criminal litigation including: pleadings and court procedural documents, judgements; court orders, injunctions, service of documents; witness statements; expert witness statements and reports; police statements and reports; evidentiary documents including telephone and social media transcripts, personal correspondence and records.
• Jurisprudence and legal theory, member-state and EU legislation; international legislation and legal codes.
• Notarial documents, affidavits, authentications, public- and private-form acts and instruments, powers of attorney, apostilles.
• Certificates: professional good-standing certificates, criminal records, police clearance/pending charges certificates; proof of residency documents, civil registry documents (births, marriages, deaths); academic records and transcripts, degree certificates and qualifications, qualifications certificates.

Business, financial, economics

• AML (anti-money laundering) regulations.
• Banking procedures, records and statements.
• Financial statements, audits.
• Statutes, memoranda, articles of association.
• Company bankruptcy and liquidation procedures, arrangements with creditors, etc.
• Mergers and demergers.
• Ethical codes, corporate codes of conducts and standard operating procedures.
• Purchase/sale agreements, real estate sales, leases, mortgages, loans, sureties and guarantees, employment contracts, service-level agreements.
• Commercial and e-commerce documents and notices, including terms and conditions of sale and/or service, warranties, disclaimers, privacy/ data
  processing notices.
• Taxation, including returns and revenue agency procedures, inspections and reports.
• Websites and e-commerce.
• Economic reports (academic and journalism - outlooks, overviews, trends).
• Social security and pensions forms, records, certificates, documents and statements.
• Company registration documents and chamber of commerce records.

EU-related

• Contract work carried out for Parliament, Commission and Court of Auditors, including parliamentary plenary sessions.

General

• Press releases.
• Video/film narration.
• Journalism.
• Museum layout, displays, multimedia content, exhibitions and shows, tours.
• History and biography, including museum-related.
• Arts and cultural heritage.