While proofreading sausage machine manuals as a student intern in Hamburg may not have been the most glamorous introduction to the translator’s craft, it at least pointed me in the direction of a challenging and fascinating career. Thirteen years on, having clocked up miles as a project manager and freelance translator, I now happily find myself gainfully employed as a staff translator at translation company Balthasar Ltd (http://www.balthasar.co.uk). Pork products safely behind me, I now exist on a more varied diet that includes boiler manuals, solar panel brochures and wind farm press releases for Germany’s biggest heating system manufacturers as well as German-speaking renewables companies.

At the conference I’m looking forward to catching up with freelance colleagues and exploring Newcastle for the first time. I’ll be attending the TweetUp, the two main conference days and the conference dinner. With recruitment in mind, I’d love to meet anyone who works with German, especially from/into Dutch and the Scandinavian languages.

I look forward to seeing you all soon,

Nicola