My Expertise

I have more than ten years of experience  translating academic books and articles in intellectual history, socio-legal theory, Renaissance studies, psychoanalysis, and the visual arts. 

My belief is that translators have to understand the text on which they are working, and that they have to convey this understanding as faithfully, succinctly and beautifully as possible.

I put a premium on reading around a subject in both the original and the target languages. I am trained to identify, access and use relevant reference materials on- and offline, in order to acquire a good feel for the author's subject and for his or her particular approach to it.

My knowledge of languages other than French and English, particularly German and Latin, my familiarity with European thought, including psychoanalysis, and my understanding of intellectual and aesthetic debates in earlier periods, such the Renaissance in Europe, and  other fields of competence I have acquired along the way, are essential reserves that I add to regularly, and enjoy drawing on.

I hope to address the reader's apprehensions about translations in general, and the extra difficulties they may present in particular, by being alert to  cultural specificities, and to the unstated contexts that inhabit so many texts. I transpose or clarify these as economically as possible.

My training in literary studies, and my on-going fascination with fiction make me sensitive to those moments when style too has much to say. Translators need to be nimble wordsmiths. They also need to have a profound knowledge of the source language, French in my case, informed by wide reading in many disciplines and also in varied historical periods.

My writing skills in English have been honed by different types of writing, by editorial work and by attentive reading in literary and non-literary fields.

What I produce for my clients are highly accurate English translations, which are sensitive to the intellectual and stylistic nuances of the original, and which read well.