I recently returned to my native Yorkshire from Brussels (and Nice and Milan before that) and, wanting to connect with colleagues, was particularly pleased to find that the next ITI conference – my first! – was to be held just a hop, skip and a short train ride away.

I have an MA in conference interpreting and translation from Leeds and started out in the industry in 2005, working as the in-house translator and interpreter for a business consultancy in Italy for two years. At the time I specialised in the legal and financial texts my colleagues in the offices next door wrote – it was very handy to be able pop in and discuss a point with the author of the text and I still miss that access today!

Since then I have dropped the finance, added international development and developed marketing and corporate communications as another specialism (thanks to a two-year stint working in the comms department of a multi-national company).

I love that being translators and/or interpreters gives us access to a wealth of information. So much of my random knowledge comes from texts I’ve worked on or conferences I’ve interpreted at and I can’t be the only one who loses track of time down the rabbit hole of research!