About me
Who am I?
I was born in the small Slovak town of Revúca in 1994. I lived there until I finished my secondary education and for 12 years, I also studied music – in particular, the violin, piano, and saxophone – at a local art school. Alongside music, I like spending my free time studying Japanese and Ukrainian, walking my dog, exploring the underwater world as a SCUBA diver, reading books or simply spending time with my family and friends.
I grew up during the era of the Harry Potter phenomenon, of which I was (and still am) a huge fan. Until this day, I maintain that it was no other than this famous wizard that brought me to studying English, since I was always interested in all the news articles concerning the release of new books or movies, which were often only available in English. As a 13-year-old, I even participated in an amateur group project whose aim was to translate the last (seventh) book into Slovak before the official Slovak translation was published and, as a 16-year-old, I became an official translator of news articles regarding the world of Harry Potter for the biggest Slovak fan page.
I did well at university, doing a double degree in Slovak literature and linguistics as well as English translation and interpreting. In my first year, I came second in the university round of the national contest known as the Student Scientific Activity, which I entered with my paper titled Translation of Idioms in The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, with which I also represented my alma mater at the Catholic University in Ružomberok.
In my second year, I started teaching English at the biggest language school in Banská Bystrica, SPEAK. Even though I only teach privately today, I continue to work with this language school for Cambridge language exams, as I am a qualified Speaking Examiner for levels B2-C2 (FCE, CAE and CPE exams), as well as levels A0-A2 of the YLE children's exams.
After successfully defending my Bachelor’s thesis, in which I analysed identity shifts in the Slovak translation of the Harry Potter books (available in the “Files for Download” section), I spent a month in Prague, where I took the CELTA (Certificate in English Language Teaching to Adults) course organised by the University of Cambridge. I finished the course with the above-standard Pass B grade, which only about 20% of all candidates manage to get.
I continued my studies at Matej Bel University for two more years and in 2018, I completed my Master’s degree with honours and was awarded two Dean’s awards as well – one for academic excellence and the other for the best thesis on translation and interpreting in my year (my Master’s thesis dealt with the perception of interpreting quality by Slovak university students and included a sample of more than 1,200 people).
Interpreting
I started gaining experience with consecutive interpreting as early as in my first year of university, when I accompanied my English-speaking partner at offices, banks, doctors, etc. In the second year, more of my language school colleagues started using my services and I’ve been doing this “community interpreting” ever since. I can confidently say that since 2013, I’ve definitely interpreted over 300 hours this way and none of my colleagues and English-speaking friends have died, been deported, or had the police knocking on their door so far… 🙂
Once I built up my consecutive interpreting experience, I finally managed to get my first few simultaneous assignments. They took place in the Dance Studio Theatre in Banská Bystrica, where I provided whispering interpretation for two Spanish dancers during several work meetings. This made me realise that the simultaneous mode was the one I primarily wanted to work in, although I won’t turn down a consecutive interpreting offer either.
My interpreting career properly took off in my final (fifth) year of university, when my professor of interpreting and a respected and well-known interpreter himself, Martin Djovčoš, who was also the supervisor for both my theses, invited me to go to the booth with him to interpret the opening ceremony on the occasion of Matej Bel University’s 25th anniversary. I was, obviously, terrified to death, but everything went well and I consider this day the day when it all really started.
After Martin’s recommendation, I started working with a translation and interpreting agency from Žiar nad Hronom, through which I managed to get lots of mainly simultaneous, but also consecutive interpreting assignments. I found out that rather than dressing up, it is nice to occasionally leave the booth, “dress down”, put on an engineer’s uniform, and go into a huge factory to explain how a machine I’ve never even known existed works, whether it’s a “washing machine for aluminium parts” or a “coin blank parameter testing machine”.
My first triumph came in early 2018, when I was chosen as one of only three people in the whole of Slovakia to interpret a simulated week-long conference in the European Parliament in Strasbourg, where I had the opportunity to see for myself what EU interpreters have to deal with. During my 7-day stay in this lovely town, I gained invaluable experience in the areas of booth cooperation, last-minute preparations (since most of the participants gave us their materials about five minutes before the start of the meetings, if at all), relay interpreting, and stress and exhaustion management. It was an unforgettable experience that I would recommend to everyone new to the field of interpreting.
In more than 5 years of my professional career, I’ve interpreted lots of different events – conferences of banks and other financial institutions, opening ceremonies, promotional events, professional conferences, a variety of technical training (often on metallurgy)… – and people – two Presidents of Slovakia, three prime ministers (including a consecutively), ministers, ambassadors and diplomats, CEOs of international corporations, stand-up comedians, EU Commission and World Bank representatives… The list goes on and it is a very simple proof of why one can never get bored of this job! 🙂
Translation
As I mentioned earlier, after my first amateur translations in middle school, I spent a few of my high school years translating news about the Harry Potter world for members of the biggest Slovak Harry Potter online platform. It was then that I realised working with languages was just the cup of tea for me.
Although I applied to Matej Bel University with the aim of translating literature one day, after a few terms I realised that although I thoroughly enjoyed reading books, I liked technical translation much more than literary. During my five years at university, we translated many different things – technical manuals, contracts, laws, promotional materials, prose, poetry, and even Pink Floyd’s album The Dark Side of the Moon (this is where my musical education proved very useful).
While working on my second degree, I started cooperating with Lýdia Machová, a polyglot and language mentor known all over the world, for whom I’ve since translated hundreds of pages of e-books and other materials on self-learning languages. My favourite texts to translate include popular science articles, contracts, reports, abstracts or summaries of final theses, and also medical studies.
When working into English, I always cooperate with my husband, who is a native speaker of English and whose job consists of doing the final proofreading of the translated text, so as to ensure its highest possible quality.
In my free time, I occasionally attempt translation from and into Japanese. So far, I’ve translated a few fables and short stories, and I’m currently starting work on a “drawer project” of translating a diary called 一リットルの涙 or, in English, “One Litre of Tears” by Aya Kitō.