1 Linguist, 3 Questions with Catherine Christaki

18 Jun 2012 | 1 Comment | posted by Megan Onions | in 1 Linguist, 3 Questions, Colleagues

The second post in my series of short interviews with fellow translators is with Catherine Christaki, a Greek translator who works with English, French and German and runs Lingua Greca with colleague Christos Floros.

• If you could change one thing about your freelance translation career up to this point, what would it be?

I would have given more attention to the work-life balance, i.e. I would have tried harder to work less than 12 hours per day and focus more on family relationships and relaxing time.

• What is the best piece of advice that you have been given by a fellow translator, or about business in general?

1. We have to treat ourselves as entrepreneurs. The quality of our work and meeting our deadlines aren’t the only priorities we should focus on during our careers.

2. Being busy all the time is no excuse to neglect our marketing efforts.

• If you weren’t working in the language services industry, what would you be doing?

Not sure, because this is what I’ve always wanted to do. Maybe something in the IT field, e.g. software engineer or some other geeky job.

Thanks, Catherine!

Catherine was born and raised in Greece and has been a full-time freelance translator since 2001. She holds a BA (Hons) in French & German from Anglia Ruskin University in Cambridge, UK, including 6 months in Cologne, Germany and 6 more in Paris, France, through the Erasmus European exchange program. Upon returning to Greece in 2001, she worked in the travel industry for 3 years and started her freelance translation business on the side. In 2006, she was awarded the Diploma in Translation (English-Greek) from The Chartered Institute of Linguists, UK. Her working languages are English, French, German (source) and Greek (target) and specialisations include IT, Telecommunications, Medical/Pharmaceutical and Gambling texts.

You can find her on Twitter at @LinguaGreca