Profile

I originally trained as a Registered General Nurse at St Thomas’ Hospital, London.

Soon afterwards, I moved to Spain, but I continued to work as a staff nurse through the BNA (British Nursing Agency) whenever I was back in England. During those 10 years, I worked in a wide range of hospital settings, including intensive care, A&E, geriatrics, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, and at private nursing homes.

In Spain, I played the violin in a trio, studied Spanish at Universidad Complutense, Madrid, and then translation at Escuela de Traductores e Intérpretes Sampere, also in Madrid.

Later on, I continued my studies at post-graduate level, gaining the CIoL Diploma in Translation (DipTrans).

Health-related professions—including medical translation—are necessarily vocational and entail an ethical responsibility. I nurture this responsibility through the following activities:

Some courses I’ve attended in the last few years:

  • The Write Stuff, Ros Schwartz, 6-hour online workshop, June 2020
  • Human nutrition and climate change, 3-hour online workshop, April 2020
  • Corpus building and mining with Sketch Engine, 3-hour workshop, June 2019
  • Design and Interpretation of Clinical Trials, 8-hour online course, Coursera, November 2018
  • Parsing the parts of our speech, 90-minute workshop, METM18, October 2018
  • Understanding the GDPR, 12-hour online course, FutureLearn, April 2018
  • European Society of Cardiology, annual congress, August 2017
  • Introduction to Ergonomics, 4-hour online course, Occupational Safety & Health Training, July 2017
  • ECG assessment, 4-hour online course, FutureLearn, March 2017
  • Paragraphing, relative clauses and commas, two 3-hour workshops, METM16, October 2016

  • ITI (UK Institute of Translation & Interpreting) – MITI, exam-qualified member
  • MET (Mediterranean Editors & Translators) – I currently serve on MET’s governing council
  • Tremédica (International Association of Translators and Editors in Medicine and Allied Sciences)
  • ITI Medical & Pharmaceutical Network

I give webinars and live presentations for universities, translators' associations, training platforms and software companies. Here are some examples:

Informally, I help answer translators’ questions:

  • on online forums
  • through my blog

Formally, I’ve been a mentor for:

  • a medical doctor making a career switch to become a translator
  • a postgraduate translation student looking to specialise in medicine

I love testing new software, getting stuck with it and (sometimes) finding a solution on my own. As a beta tester for SDL Trados Studio, I enjoy investigating new features and bugs with the beta team members and developers. I share my insights on my blog, through webinars and publications.

My translator’s toolkit includes:

  • MS Office 365
  • SDL Trados Studio Professional 2019
  • Abbyy FineReader 14
  • Xbench
  • BaccS