ABOUT
From journalist to traveller to
Professional Latvian Translator for 30 Years.
With a lifelong dedication to my trade, I've worked as a professional wordsmith, crafting compelling content in both Latvian and English for over 30 years.
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STARTING A NEW LIFE
It was 2003, and life had mercilessly deposited me in a country foreign to me – Portugal.
At the time, I did not speak the language, did not understand the people and was thoroughly homesick.
There were only a handful of English-speaking people around, all retired ex-pats, but, thankfully, they did like to read.
SEEING MY LANGUAGE
One day, when I was perusing the meagre offerings at an English lady’s house, I picked up a random book, opened it at the title page and was completely stunned.
There, on the very first page of the book, without doubt written and printed in English, was a dedication – ‘Manai mīļajai vecmāmiņai’.
THE IDEA
I was in the middle of Portugal (literally), sitting on a tiled Mediterranean floor with palm trees and a vigorous Bougainvillea brushing against the windows, absentmindedly listening to Sheila’s chattering,
and there it was - a dedication to somebody's grandmother in plain Latvian.
It was one of Kathy Reichs’s books. The author of Bones, as it turned out, is indeed of Latvian descent. And she gave me the gift of feeling part of a whole at a time when I needed it.
LEAP OF FAITH
I do not believe Sheila ever understood why I was so excited.
She declared that the knowledge of such an obscure language as Latvian was not going to take me anywhere, now that I was far away from my in-house translator’s post back in Riga, however, I should think of offering my services as a Russian translator on this translation website she had just discovered.
Turns out Latvian is not such an inconsequential language after all. The fact that you are reading this should be proof enough.
Three months later, when I had already settled in England, I started freelancing full time, and I have never looked back.
23 Years Later
This job not only allowed me to raise three kids and work full time but also kept me thoroughly entertained.
Where else could you jump from religious book to vicious murder trial to excavator manual, inmate phone call transcription in one week and end it with the very distinctive prose of social services, whose language I now speak fluently. I also understand legalese, pidgin English and hydraulics.
MY WORK
How I can help you,
I can bring to life your marketing campaign, localise the website, recreate articles on most social sciences, make sure your policy papers are clear and concise, and render your intelligence data
palatable for wider audiences. In other words, if you have a high-quality product and need a high-quality paperwork or text to go with it, you will need my services, and translation is only part of the parcel.
However, there are three subjects I do not do – cricket, oil and Large Hadron Collider.
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