Although I originally started out as an academic linguist (with a thesis on early 17th century Elizabethan love sonnets), I migrated to a doctorate in economics and hence to a wide variety of technical fields living and working in more than half a dozen countries. My language skills come partly from a peculiar brain defect, which deferred the usual loss of childlike language learning capacity at age 8 to the age of 45; partly from a solid knowledge of the technical vocabularies of a wide range of specialities, gained as director of two think tanks and a long career a consultant. My approach to translating is to be mindful of the reader, not faithful to the author. The author benefits by being understood and enjoyed. I particularly enjoy speech writing assignments, were rhetoric elements like irony must be handled like unstable firecrackers.

For the past seven years I have lived and cruised on my sail boat, commuting between Sicily and Greece, with translation and editing work a welcome change from an otherwise wholesome physical existence.