ABOUT

I’ve worked as a full-time German-to-English translator and as a copyeditor since 2009, both in academics and as a freelance linguist specializing in legal, financial, and marketing translations for large translation agencies. I’m fluent in German – it was my first language as a child of German immigrants in Canada and I lived in Germany for years at a time after 1989. My graduate work, which focused on German history (PhD, Cornell University, 1998), involved the close reading and translation of German texts ranging from handwritten sixteenth-century court records to modern historiography. The resulting dissertation entitled “Visions of the World: Geography and Maps during the Baroque Age, 1550-1775” was very much a study of the language and science of early-modern mapmaking and geography and their relation to the aspirations of absolutist government; built around a case study of eighteenth-century Saxony, it was based on research carried out in the archives and libraries of Leipzig and Dresden. This academic background honed my analytical, linguistic, and research skills, which have proven crucial for my work.

TRANSLATION EXPERIENCE

My academic translations have included books, articles, lectures, and grant applications across a wide spectrum of subject areas, from gender roles in Renaissance court culture to the Holocaust, as well as cyborgs, space medicine, victimology, and the Russian revolution. The agency work has ranged from lease agreements and financial reports to birth certificates and judicial verdicts, as well as advertising campaigns for cosmetics, hotels, energy drinks, and airlines. Much of this agency work has been done for some of the world’s largest law firms, financial institutions, and corporations. But a lot of it was for smaller enterprises that would really have been better served by artisanal translators.

WHY CHOOSE ME?

Whether translating or copyediting, my goal is always to produce an accurate English rendition of the text that precisely captures the appropriate tone. While machine translations are becoming increasingly viable, getting it right – really getting it right – has less to do with translation per se than with properly managing the nuances of the target language. It means paying close attention to the discourse and terminology of the specific professional or academic field and ensuring stylistic consistency. Depending on the client’s needs, it also means checking facts, querying ambiguities, and offering feedback – all with the goal of producing the strongest possible text.

AGENCY/MACHINE TRANSLATIONS vs. ARTISANAL TRANSLATIONS

Good translations are expensive. Thus, if all you need is a rudimentary translation that conveys a sense of the meaning of the original, then machine translations (e.g., Google translate - although one should be aware of confidentiality issues) are often quite adequate. If you’re a large law firm or corporation and need to have high volumes of material translated or edited in a very short time period, your best bet is to use large agencies, which, along with using their own evolving machine translation tools, draw upon pools of hundreds or even thousands of linguists. But a large agency simply cannot deliver any kind of personal continuity. Therefore these corporations cannot deliver the kind of reliable quality and continuity that comes from establishing working relationships with qualified linguists who learn your preferences and needs and take personal responsibility for their work. So if you’re looking for consistent quality you can rely on and translations you can trust, then you may want to choose a more “artisanal” approach, which will give you better, more consistent results – often for a lower price – than what you’ll get from a large agency.

WHAT NEXT?

If you think you might want to work with me, send me an email with a description of your project and any files you might want to share. No project is too small. Confidentiality is assured. Communication takes place by email or Skype. Rates and payment terms will be negotiated individually.

Contact: bernardheise.yellowboat@gmail.com