Originally from Edinburgh, Scotland, I hold an MA Hons in French & History of Art from the University of Glasgow and a Masters (MSc) in Translation from Heriot-Watt University.
I started my translation career volunteering for the French newspaper Le Journal International, translating articles on international politics and current affairs from French into English. Since then, I’ve worked on a variety of translating, interpreting and subtitling projects for leading brands, medical institutions, government and tourism organisations, museums and film production companies based in Belgium, France, the French Caribbean, Spain and the United Kingdom.
During my time living in Valencia, Spain between 2018 and 2020 I made it my mission to learn as much as possible about the Spanish language and culture. After several months working as an interpreter at the Escuela de Arroces y Paella Valenciana, a cooking school offering classes to tourists and locals alike, I started my career as a freelance translator. In November 2018, I started work as an ad-hoc project manager, SEO copywriter and translator for the Belgian agency BeTranslated. From then on, I developed my technical and linguistic skills in this domain and expanded my client base, and I have now worked on over 270 projects in a wide variety of fields.
After two years in Spain, followed by two years back in Scotland, I moved to Lyon to refresh my French and focus more on my Francophone client base. Here, I gained more professional experience as an interpreter in corporate, NGO and institutional contexts, and worked on a wide variety of translation projects in the arts, gastronomy, heritage and industrial spheres. I also joined the autonomous coworking l’Atélier des Médias, where I was able to work collaboratively with other translators, copywriters and journalists.
Currently I am studying Modern Greek in Athens, while my micro-entreprise remains based in France.
My opinion is that foreign languages are best lived rather than learned. It is the challenge of bridging the cultural gap that draws me to translation, and ties in with my general passion and curiosity for music, art and cinema across borders.
Rayo Translations 