About me

Short story

I'm a German and English to Italian translator and subtitler with a BA in Translation and Interpretation. I translate, write, proofread. Specialized in Marketing, Tourism, Outdoor and Sports. This is the SHORT story, so take a look at my services to find out more. When I'm not translating, eating, or taking care of other physiological needs, you can find me on my yoga mat, lost (willingly) in the woods, in the depths of the sea, or messing around in the kitchen. I love messing around in the kitchen. If you can't find me, it probably means I don't want to be found.

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Long story

Year 2012, Germany, super cold winter. A younger me is sitting at a desk, working and studying abroad long-term for the very first time.

⬆ That’s when I found writing was an exceptional way to explore the sense of life and express the complexity of the world I was seeing to let things out. In the first months of my life abroad I didn’t really have anyone that I could open up with. That’s why I started journaling, writing my considerations about insightful happenings, feelings, experiences. Unlocking my imagination. I soon became addicted to it. I really enjoyed grabbing my laptop and write, write, write. Without any worry of being offensive, sappy, or – like my dad used to tell me whenever reading a piece of my writing – too introspective. The joy of expressing myself the way I wanted, whenever I wanted, dropping all the filters, was just so satisfying.

This is partly why I decided to study Translation, of course after long-pondered considerations about the bright future of the absolutely uncompetitive, ever-growing translation industry and the utter failure and unreliability of Machine Translation technologies (ha-ha).

I imagined diving into fragrant books, piles of dictionaries, in endless searches for the perfect wor(l)d. University and life promptly showed me a couple of sad truths:

• The translation industry can be quite competitive > You need to market yourself, like it or not.
• You won’t always translate what you want to translate > But you can get there at some point.
• There’s this thing called MTPE (Machine Translation Post-editing), and it’s not a taboo anymore.
• Expectations can be tricky

I graduated on a windy and rainy wintery day, in November 2017. And there I was, with my fresh BA degree in Applied Interlingual Communication (to simplify: Translation). Now what? 🤔

I was feeling feather-light, but there was this voice inside me that I had silenced for way too long, screaming:

"Go explore the world!"

In 2018 I started working remotely on my first translation projects. Not what I expected, of course. But that meant I could travel, so I headed to Asia, excited about being location independent and exploring exotic places, colorful cultures and spicy foods.

Since then I have been running a guesthouse in the lush Malaysian jungle, studying the ancient teachings of yoga and its modern - rather contortionist – application in India, exploring the stunning underwater world in Thailand, and more. All of this with a 40 liters greenish backpack on my shoulders.

Here’s a couple fun things I learned:

• the actual meaning of orangutan.

• you can really fit your whole life in a 40 liters bag (less is more)

• a dog can be your best friend on an island (even if you thought you used to be a cat person)

• how to make a didgeridoo from a bamboo stick.

• how to take my time (still learning).

• impermanence (more about this coming soon).

I believe that travelling to explore different cultures, if done with the right mindset, can be mind-blowing and incredibly useful for our personal evolution. The so-called “current situation” didn’t stop me from travelling and I realized there’s no need to go to the antipodes to do it.

I love to write, translate, decode messages and uncover hidden meanings because I think that proper communication among human beings can make things better. I care about our post-Babel future.

So this is me, I guess. I try to find my balance, sometimes through writing, or getting lost in the woods, sometimes through yoga. By the way, by “yoga” I don’t mean tight pants and beautiful belly buttons, although that is often how all of us yoga practitioners look like. I mean a lot more. But that’s another (long) story.