From UK to NL

Growing up in England, I loved languages and writing, but theatre was my thing. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in performing arts, I yearned to broaden my horizons, think in different languages, be international. Armed with a certificate in teaching English as a foreign language, in 1988 I said goodbye to the UK. I spent a year in Brussels brushing up my French, and then moved on to Amsterdam, where I immediately felt at home. I now hold dual Dutch and British citizenship.

English Teaching

In the 1990s, when I wasn’t making offbeat site-specific theatre, I was teaching English. My work at the Royal Tropical Institute immersed me in a different country every week, and I learnt about the workings of a vast assortment of companies, NGOs and international organisations.

It was through teaching advanced-level English that I acquired a thorough knowledge of the nuts and bolts of English, which I gratefully draw on every day. This is why I know the difference between a defining and a non-defining relative clause, and precisely what you can and can’t do with a semicolon.

Performance

My theatre background took me from performance art in house parties, to site-specific theatre in a steelworks, to a theatre tour in Belgium. I played bongos on the stage of Paradiso in Amsterdam, and performed with live quails on a Northumberland hillside. In the end, my partner Deborah Abrahams and I established a live art company called Private Thoughts in Public Places, and toured our installation performances to international festivals. It’s thanks to this side of my life that I bring a breadth of knowledge and understanding to arts-related translation projects.

Journalism

In the mid-2000s, I decided to bid farewell to performance and focus on translation and writing. This led me into an unexpected mini-career in journalism, as a translator, newsreader, writer and presenter at Radio Netherlands Worldwide (Radio Nederland Wereldomroep), the Dutch international broadcaster. By following news, politics and current affairs in detail, I got to know Dutch society inside out.

Read more about my work for Radio Netherlands Worldwide.

Web editing

When RNW stopped doing news and became RNW Media, an NGO for social change, there came another twist. I was part of the team that launched the Love Matters website, providing reliable, pleasure-positive information on sexual and reproductive health and rights to young people in places where it’s hard to come by. Love Matters has gone from strength to strength and is now flourishing in seven countries across the world. I translated and jointly wrote the original content, and went on to be the senior editor of Love Matters India. As a consultant, I trained the contributors in writings skills for the web.

Read more about my work for Love Matters.

Voice-overs

My job as a newsreader stemmed from the diverse voice-over work I’ve done over the years, from museum guides to canal tours to commercials. For years, I even voiced football interviews and commentary for Ajax TV International, the club’s own weekly TV shows. I don’t even like football, but hey, I’m versatile!

This website concentrates on my translation services, but I’m still very much available for voice-overs.

Portuguese

Dutch is my second language, but Portuguese is my passion. Starting from a long-term love of Brazilian music and culture, I’ve spent the past few years immersing myself in the language. I’m now also offering Portuguese to English translation.