History

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Here is a brief history of my translating and interpreting life.

Translating:

I started translating in college. I didn't get paid though. Students in Slovenia had no choice but to use English textbooks and to make it easier, we decided to translate a book. Sometimes there were ten of us sometimes many more. We split pages and each person translated her/his own share, wrote summary and then we shared those notes among each other. That way we were able to make notes on a 300 page book within a week.

I started translating professionally in 2002. After moving to the United States I started working as a part-time freelance translator at the Slovenian Service of the Voice of America. Soon I was contacted by some private translating agencies and my clientele began to grow. Today I work with numerous translating agencies, government entities, companies and get a significant number of requests from private individuals as well.

Interpreting:

I started interpreting by accident. Seriously.

I sent an application to the Office of Language Services at the State Department to take a test for a translator. Somehow my application ended up at the Interpreting Division. They called me, set up a date for a consecutive interpreting test, and that's how it started. I took the test, passed it, and a few weeks later went to my first assignment to Roswell, New Mexico.

Couple of weeks after my return from Roswell the Interpreting Division organized a week-long course on seminar interpreting. I passed that one too and became a seminar interpreter as well.

After that it started unfolding itself. There were people coming to the United States on different programs and in different roles. I interpreted for them at one meeting or had to stay with them during their visit to the United States, some of which lasted for three or four weeks.

There were people from government (Karl Erjavec, Defense Minister), military leaders (Alojz Lipic and his spouse, Chief of Staff of the Slovenian Military), people from entertainment industry (Damjan Kozole, film director), people from NGO's (Katjusa Popovic, director of Kljuc), law enforcement representatives (groups of police detectives), journalists (Andrej Brstovsek - newspaper Dnevnik, Ksenija Samardzija Matul - Radio Slovenian International, Nadja Podobnik - Slovenian News Agency), president of the Slovenian Roma Association (Joze Horvat - Muc) and many more.

In 2008 I had an opportunity to interpret for the White House. During Slovenian presidency to the European Union President Bush and his wife Laura visited Slovenia to participate at the EU - US summit. I was sent there to interpret for the first lady.