Photo credit: Adobe Stock (Disko Bay, Greenland).

Who am I?

For as long as I can remember besotted with words, with chiselled language, with clarity of speech, and after two English prizes in lycée (sixth form), I was however dissuaded from following this path—being of humble origin—in favour of a supposedly safer and more profitable course of study, and graduated as ingénieur de gestion Ingénieur de gestion (Bachelor and Master of Science degree in Business Engineering), HEC Management School, Liège University, Belgium

Curriculum (as of 1997)
Languages: English, Spanish, Dutch | Law: Constitutional and European Law, Law of Contracts, Business Law, Advanced Business Law, Social Law, Tax Law | Finance: Finance 101, Accounting & Finance, Cost Accounting (or Activity-based Costing), Managerial Accounting, Corporate Accounting, Financial Analysis, Company Financial Management (Seminar), Financial Audit, Company Financing, Asset Management & Financial Modelling | Economics: General Economics/Economics for Industry, Macroeconomics, Microeconomics, Political Economics, Government Economics | Mathematics: Mathematics for Economists and Managers, Statistics, Probability Theory, Advanced Mathematics, Advanced Probability & Statistics Theory, Financial Mathematics, Operations Research, Mathematics for Financial Transactions | Sciences: Physics, Chemistry, Physics & Chemistry Laboratory, General Chemistry/Chemistry for Industry, Chemical Engineering, Physics for Industry | Social sciences: Psychology, Sociology, Philosophy | Technology: Electricity, Electrotechnics, Electronics, CAD & Materials Technology, General Machine Tools & Productics, Energy Technology, Technology: a State of the Art | Computer Science: Computer Science 101, Data Base Management Systems, Data Analysis, IT Systems Analysis, Information Systems Design | Management: Logistics & Manufacturing, Human Resources Management, Enterprise Role Play, Business Strategy (Seminar), Theory of Organizations, Preparing to be a Manager (Seminar) | Marketing: Marketing 101, Market Research, Strategic Marketing Management | Environment: Environment & Industrial Ecology, Entrepreneurship & Environment.
in 1997. Shortly after, a Flemish IT consultancy offered me three months of paid accelerated training in programming, a valuable skill set which I was eager to acquire.

This led me to fulfill a series of missions in Brussels for various Flemish IT consultancies, first within the banking industry and later at the ministère des Finances (more or less equivalent to HM Revenue & Customs, minus social contributions). I gained Java certification in 2004 but somehow felt like I was going round in circles: my job was just not fulfilling anymore.

John Hayes Prize 2022 for excellence in translation
Member of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting
Certificat Voltaire, Expert Level (99th percentile)

At that point, I had been reading mostly English literature for ten years and my ever-present love of languages finally took over. I set up as a freelance translator in 2005, with my English teacher’s voice echoing in my mind, when he was advising me, many years ago, to become a translator. I gained the CIOL's DipTrans in 2008.

Today, I have been practising this beautiful and enlightening craft for more than 19 years, and I leverage my love of words, languages, and clarity of speech in the service of demanding businesses and their corporate communication, but most of all in the service of IGOs, NGOs, associations, and other entities working for social justice and social progress.

How may I help you?

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Specialisms

My obsessions are clear writing and on point communication. My ideals are social justice and social progress, which largely hinge on institutions, corporations, international cooperation, and human development being fair, equitable, sustainable, and respectful of human rights.

My academic background and career path also naturally led me to specialize in asset and wealth management, as well as in commercial law, litigation and arbitration.

Editorial content and communication

> Publication-grade content <

Advocacy, feature articles, op-eds, press releases, reports, websites, corporate communication, content marketing, brochures and booklets, etc.

> Contents of a general nature or pertaining to my specialisms <

International cooperation, IGOs (intergovernmental organizations)
and NGOs (non-governmental organizations)

Financial and legal translation

Click on arrows for more detail or here for samples.

International cooperation

Human rights, women rights, children rights

Poverty, hunger (agri-food systems) and WASH (water, sanitation and hygiene)

Education, information/media literacy, disinformation

Democracy, fundamental rights and freedoms, institutional processes

Business and human rights, labour market, CSR

See samples below.

Financial and legal translation

Asset and wealth management

Fund commentaries, market reviews, investment strategies, prospectuses, KID, monthly updates, newsletters, blog articles, etc.

Stocks, bonds, derivatives, hedge funds, UCITS, trust funds, foundations, etc.

Responsible investment, ESG investment

Commercial law, litigation and arbitration

Institutional arbitration, ad hoc arbitration, statements, proceedings minutes, legal correspondence.

> In strict confidentiality, of course. <

Samples

Below is a selection of translation samples, so you may form your own opinion on the quality of my work.

Sample #2 (French translation, from English): Répartition de la diversité génétique humaine selon Lewontin : cadre théorique et impact

For humanity's sake, please do try not to say ‘race’ anymore, but rather ‘so-called race’. Did you know that a similar wording (‘prétendue race’) is used in the French Penal Code, for example in article 225-1, which defines the various types of discriminations?

Wording ‘so-called race’ is also used, albeit not systematically, on www.racepowerofanillusion.org, a great resource for English speakers.

Sample #3 (French translation, from Dutch): Les journées de la traduction font sortir les traducteurs de l'ombre : « Mon nom en couverture ? Je ne dis pas non. »

#NameTheTranslator #LesTraducteursExistent

Code de la propriété intellectuelle (French intellectual property act), article L112-3: ‘Authors of translations, adaptations, transformations or otherwise rearrangements of intellectual works benefit from the protection herein enshrined . . . .’

For the non exhaustive list of what constitutes intellectual work per French law, see article L112-2.

What my clients say

‘Since September 2017, Joëlle translated over 750,000 words for us in the field of international cooperation and development, and also occasionally provided French subtitling and English captioning for short videos. Doing so, she consistently delivered French translations which required very little review, and showed great responsiveness and attention to detail. I recommend her services for French translation in the field of international cooperation.’

Harun SalahManaging Director at Prime Production Ltd

(recommendation on my LinkedIn page, 13 June 2023)

‘As a Translation Project Manager, I collaborated with Joëlle for about seven years. She takes great pride in her translation work and treats her craft as an art. Whenever we had a project requiring serious thought and involvement from the linguist's side, I liked to rely on Joëlle and trusted her work. Joëlle goes always above and beyond to surpass expectations, and we trust her expertise.’

Alexander ZinchenkoTranslation & Localization Department Manager at MasterWord

(recommendation on my LinkedIn page, 18 October 2022)

‘As a Translation Project Manager, I collaborated with Joëlle for about seven years. She showed a lot of dedication to her work, great attention to detail and was always very responsive. She also was our preferred English to French translator for many clients, especially for editorial content. On one particular occasion, Joëlle's excellent French translation actually helped me to make sense of the rather poorly written IT marketing material we had been given as the English source text.’

Yvonne CockerFormer Senior Translation Project Manager at Surrey Translation Bureau

(recommendation on my LinkedIn page, 18 January 2023)

‘As a Translation Project Manager, I collaborated with Joëlle for about four years, during which she translated editorial content from Dutch to French for the culture and tourism sector. We were always very satisfied with her French translations.’

Dr. Farkas-HubrichTeacher of German and former Translation Project Manager

(recommendation on my LinkedIn page, 13 Octobre 2022)

Get in touch

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‘The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – 'tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.’ – Mark Twain

Did you craft your message with the utmost care? Then rest assured I will translate it to French with the utmost care as well – with the utmost respect both for your intended meaning and for the right way to convey it natively in French, so your target audience does not perceive it as ‘almost right’.

For a free quote, simply send the documents to be translated or the videos to be subtitled for assessment to . You may rest assured that confidential material will be treated accordingly (for example, embargoed press releases).

Please note that as of December 2023, I only translate part-time and have only access to my emails twice a day, between 12:30pm and 1:30pm, and after 7pm (Paris time). My availability is restricted to human translation only, and a maximum of 2,500 words each Saturday.

For contents of a general nature or pertaining to my specialisms as described above, I provide you with, depending on your specific needs:

  • – French translation from English and Dutch;
  • – revision (bilingual editing), review (monolingual editing) and proofreading of such translations, as per definitions in standard ISO 17100:2015;
  • – layout check/DTP after translation (thus text expansion or contraction[1]), in Word, PowerPoint or InDesign;
  • – glossary building;
  • – English-French subtitling, as well as Engish-French and French-French subtitling for the deaf and hard-of-hearing (SDH);
  • – proofreading and editing of documents drafted in French (manuscripts, theses, research articles, etc.).

Looking forward to hearing from you!

Certificat Voltaire, Expert Level (99th percentile)

[1] Text expansion is frequent and normal when translating from English to French (usually 15 to 25%). This is true for all romance languages. Translation from English to German or Dutch (germanic languages) may even cause text expansion up to 35% or more. This also means that translation from Dutch to French usually leads to text contraction.