My name is Margriet. Just survived (mostly by ignoring) my 57th birthday. Am single mother of a blooming prettypretty (my genes!!!) nervewracking (what I`m concerned, am just mum) and ever so sweet (nearly all other persons, congratulating me for having brought up my not even 14 year old daughter in a "getting rare"- manner. oh, she is so polite, so open-minded, friendly, always there for helping out ... yeah, did a good job, just do wonder when this lovely girl returns to me ... that way!) No, no real complaints, it`s just the good/bad old Freudian (actually the Greeks already came up with that idea/interpretation...) definition of the psycho-stuff going on during puberty between loving mother and (former) child, now, the heiress to the throne, princess wants to kick queen (mum) off and , well, just take over, probably makes a lot of sense , you know, Mother Nature and all that.

Well: "hard skills"= Staatsexamen (German University). English/German literature, Linguistics, Sociology, Philosophy

PhD in Philosophy, University of London

dramaschool (RSC), London

London, well, if life would follow one`s wishes and plans, I should be living there still... spent about a good 15 years in London, in the beginning doing any odd jobs, then a "career-swing" : fell in love (he with me, problem : he was married and stayed so, all the 12 years we had our ever so passionate relationship... during the last years it went very much along the line of "Who`s afraid of Virginia Woolf", but, nonetheless, he was my first "employer", had an advertising agency... and I really did learn a lot about PR, etc. (which later in life came in rather handy...)
I nearly forgot something neither "hard" nor "soft2 nor "skill2, if you ask me: I fell , serious, head over heels in love with London, people, England...and the English language... for reasons I don`t know either, I (luckily, cause it`s gruesome...) never had a German accent (honestly, no idea... , also, I never took English-courses of any sort, I just "breathed" it in... and , well, I am defined as "near native speaker and writer"

Now I want to protect you against hearing all the fascinating stories of my long-and-winding-road of a life, professional and private, in the "On and Off"... some weeks/some months in London, then back to Germany... doing freelance work as a performing artist ... an actress,, also in both countries... messed up a promising film-career (Peter Greenaway wanted me...), because I had just founded "The Theatre in the Museum Sophienblatt" and it was a strangely brilliant melancholic and hilarious piece of theatre, of , for the first time, I was author as well... and it was a one-person- play... premiering three weeks after I got the invitation for a role (not the smallest one) in Peter Greenaways first film... and overnight success, "The Draughtsman`s Contract"...

Okay, never mind, , the "if onlys" just end up boring or, worse, depressing.

I worked, just to name a few institutions, for the Goethe-Institute; the Bundesverband Bildender Künstler; Kiel University ...

my workfields more than less all included skills, knowledge... and experience: organisation/working according to deadlines/ translating/ texting/ PR-work/ moderating (i.e. seminars, symposiums, colloquiums...and filmfestivals/cultural events, exhibitions etc.), mostly doing so "jumping" from English to German and vice versa: I liked that... and people of all paths of life liked me doing it.

Translations: as already written in "Services and Offerings" , I , to begin with, have a lot of experience -stretching over decades - in translating scientific (I learned a lot about scientific areas like, for example, architecture (translated a book for the then Prof. and head of the Muthesius University of Fine Arts, which was successfully published), archaeology/ethnology/anthropology during my work at Kiel University, where I with a small team organized (naturally including publications of different sorts) an International Documentary film Festival (the main subjects of the films were those cited above), and so on, and so on: I did a lot of translating work in what is broadly defined as "art and culture", at times I really was glad when I got an offer to translate some very private texts (one I always and dearly remember: the letter of an old German man, who wanted to not only send birthday congratulations to Queen Elizabeth, but (I wonder whether she actually ever got to read it, but I made a real big effort...) wanted to tell her about his fascination he has been holding for her ever since he ONCE saw her walk by when she was still a teenager at some occasion during a visit to Germany... and of course, he wanted it all expressed in the most polite and adequate style of language... well, the old man was elated with the letter, and why I mention (it is naturally not the most convincing proof of what I am able to do...but: it probably characterizes my "attitude": such a letter and a very satisfied client are -to me - always and ever as important and incentive to do my best as , well, an essay to be published, a speech for a politician (by the way, I just realize: I better stop telling you "about me"... because I have a very good reason to do so: I have to finish a rather tricky (political speech, always "tricky"!) translation, and the deadline is tomorrow morning ... then I`ll have to go thru it with "him", and may be to some coaching as well, voice, body language, fine-tuning: pauses, get the attention AND hold it, focus on audience, etc. etc. ... he wants to rhetorically beat Obama, but , well, it takes all my tact and charme and , if necessary, determined advice to -for the time being - rather keep the ball low...

Well, any questions: I will answer them professionally, truthfully and , may be, with what is called "personal touch" (e.g. I am blessed with chunks of "English" humour... I have been told again and again, all I know: it is "authentic", am very grateful though not knowing to whom) So, bye for tonight, Margriet