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So, Beverley, what made you want to be a translator?

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Well, I became curious about languages

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because my mum used to tell me about my grandfather,

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who I'd never met, but he was a French speaker

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because he was brought up in the French-speaking part of Canada.

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And so I think that sort of piqued my curiosity.

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And then at school, I found languages easy.

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but I didn't want to teach.

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And that seemed to be the obvious thing that you'd go into.

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I wanted to use my languages to do something.

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So I chose, deliberately chose a course which was more practical, I thought,

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because they included translation and interpreting

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and also the history, politics and sociology of the countries that you were studying.

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Could you explain the difference between translating and interpreting?

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Yes, translating is written,

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so you're translating from something that you can see on a piece of paper.

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And interpreting is where you're translating the spoken word,

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so you're speaking.

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So what languages did you study?

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So I studied French and Spanish at university

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and then I moved to Spain when I finished

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and it was very difficult to get a job that wasn't teaching English.

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So I went back to the UK,

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did a diploma in specialised and technical translation

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and then decided that I would never, ever become a translator

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because it was too boring.

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But eventually, after teaching for 17 years,

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I decided I spent two years unemployed and then I started working in an engineering company

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and I was doing translation work basically and I thought well I could do this myself

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and decided to get to stop become a freelance translator and because I enjoyed the freedom

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it gave me and the fact that I could work anywhere basically as long as I've got an

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internet connection. So do you prefer translating to interpreting? I prefer

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translating because you've got time to think and you've got time to play around

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with the sentences and improve the finished product whereas interpreting

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it's on the spot you've got to think on your feet. I'm not very good at that.