CONNECTIONS No. 1

get in touch with Rea, write to
To
rea.gutzwiller@reatranslations.com
Since 2010 I have travelled through four
continents or more than a dozen countries and
visited countless cities and discovered beautiful
landscapes. I have learnt amazing new things,
from Chinese up to upper-intermediate level to
how to drink coffee in Vietnam (with condensed
milk!), from understanding Argentinian Spanish
and drinking mate to mastering Japanese train
schedules. But how do I actually make it happen?
to make to fit it all into your schedule, what you
get out of it is extremely precious. I remember a
University professor once explaining, that we all
needed to expand our world knowledge in order to
be good translators. She was right – the more I
travel, the more I learn and this helps me find
solutions for tricky bits in my texts and lets me
understand a lot better what the text is really
trying to convey.
How can I be this free, all while working full-time
on my translations? Does it sound too good to be
true to you?
Can you imagine yourself at a desk overlooking
the ocean one week and a few days later sending
out your translations from a hipster café in a busy
Based on a few short articles published in SOM,
this series will show a different aspect of how to
metropolis? Wishful thinking you say? Far from it.
Watch this space.
be a freelance translator, giving the “free” in
“freelancer” a face, an inspiration.
Basically, it all comes down to letting go, planning
and being organised. But whatever effort you need