Liset Nyland - Technical translations to and from Italian, English and Danish.

Liset Nyland performs translations from Italian into English and Danish.

Profile

I have a degree in chemical engineering from The Engineering Academy of Denmark ('93) and in '94 I completed a MEng in Petroleum Engineering at Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh.

After the studies I started working for AEA Technology's oil & gas division in Aberdeen and later in Dorchester. Job tasks involved reservoir simulation and well-test analysis. Wanting to see the World I got a 3 month's contract with Schlumberger Oilfield Services and some exciting projects in Milan, Port-Harcourt and Stavanger, mainly related to open-hole logging QC, reservoir simulation, well-test analysis and production logging interpretation.

We have lived in Italy since 2001. Since then I have participated in two professional courses certified by the Abruzzo Region, as Webmaster and as Linux system administrator respectively. The integrated on-the-job training helped me maturate the decision, that working freelance would be the best solution for me.

So why choose an engineer for translating?

A translator with a degree in translation may know a lot about linguistics and translation tools; but technical translations often require specific knowledge of technical terms related to the subject, or, if the translator doesn't have this knowledge, that he/she may be able to learn really quickly.

In these cases my technical background becomes a very valuable asset. The job as a technical translator can also be very interesting - even when we talk about a manual for an espresso machine - as you get the occasion to learn and understand terms and concepts new to you.

I mainly translate from English and Italian into Danish, which is my native language, and where I always deliver a high quality result.

I also translate technical manuals from Italian (and Danish) into English, mainly because technical translators are in high demand here in Italy. The two languages have some fundamental differences and the way of expressing yourself is also very different. Technical translators with working experience from English-speaking countries are more likely to deliver a good result.

This is also the reason why I do little translation work from English and Danish into Italian. Even though I speak Italian fluently, it is quite difficult to imitate the complicated Italian way of expressing themselves. Roughly you may say, that where a Dane uses two words to explain his opinion in a matter, an Italian needs five...
But if we talk about simple texts, a manual, database or a piece of software, where the concise English/Scandinavian style needs to be preserved, well, then I am sure to do a good job.