ABOUT ME

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My background

I'm a writer and reviewer with a background in professional translation. I was born in New Zealand and emigrated to France in 2001. As a child I learned to appreciate international cultural and linguistic differences in the English-speaking world by travelling and living around the Commonwealth and the USA. These differences are greater than you might think. Today, a large portion of my work consists of identifying these differences and adapting content to sound natural for different parts of the English-speaking world.

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Why I became a translator

I'm a voracious reader and I love novels, biographies and history books, but can also be caught reading catalogues and flyers when there's nothing else around. The idea of translating for a living was very appealing with its emphasis on reading, writing and intercultural communication. Early in my career I focused on non-fiction translation and translated several non-fiction books from French into English. You can see a list of these on my 'Books' page. The books I helped translate are in the fields of fine arts, graphic design, architecture and urban planning.

I stopped translating non-fiction books in 2015 when I received an increase in localisation projects, which included video games, websites and mobile apps.

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A new direction – my work today

Today, I write, proofread and review web content in English and take care of a mix of other SEO optimisation tasks for clients. ​I enjoy working on web & app copy, as well as technical documentation, like user guides, FAQs, course content and tutorials.

I offer copywriting and copyediting services in British, Australian or New Zealand English. This comprises content origination and keyword research. I'm also interested in plain English writing, structured content and accessibility issues.

I own copies of major English style guides:

• The Economist Style Guide

• Butcher's Copy-editing

• The Chicago Manual of Style

• New Hart's Rules

• MLA

• The Associated Press Stylebook

• the Australian Government Style Manual:  6th edition and online edition

• Fit to Print, a New Zealand style guide.

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