Born in Hanover, Germany to a Greek mother and a German father, I was raised bilingually. From early on, I developed a hankering to understand what everyone in this private little Tower of Babel I called home was actually saying.
This lingual detective work continued into my adolescence when I started watching movies in their original languages and learned to appreciate the pleasure of hearing the likes of Jean-Paul Belmondo, Robert De Niro and Arnold Schwarzenegger in their native or, in the latter case not-so-native, tongue.
During my course of studies, I spent a year at the Paris Nanterre University where I deepened my expertise in the French language through studies and, maybe more importantly, extensive visits to the Cinémathèque Française.
After completing my Magister (a German degree, in scope similar to a Masters) degree in Comparative Literature Studies & Philosophy, my passion for movies led me to work for the Berlin-based movie news start-up Moviepilot.com.
Here, my mastery of the English language took a giant leap forward. Not only was the corporate language English, but I also wrote short news items, movie synopses and longer articles on a regular basis in said language. More importantly, this is where I met my wife who is a citizen of the United States and who I couldn't help but follow to her home country where I still live and work.
In 2018, I started working for the educational advisory firm Trustforte Corp. as an in-house translator. The substantial daily workload mainly consisted of educational, financial and legal documents and many different kinds of certificates needed for immigration purposes. As the bulk of the translations were intended for immigration purposes, pressing deadlines were a daily given. My language pairs at Trustforte were English <-> German and French -> English.
Though I left the company in February 2019 to work as a freelance translator, I consider the experience I gained there invaluable. I still count the company among my clients.