Translator Lounge

In real life things quite often happen in strange and unexpected ways. This certainly was the case with my professional career starting as a research chemist and “ending up” as a freelance translator.

After studying chemistry at Frankfurt University and taking a PhD in chemistry at University College London I successfully applied for the position of a research chemist with Schering in Berlin. I happened to become a research chemist within the plant protection chemistry-department. Since most pesticides then contained chlorine atoms as an integral part of their chemical structure and those chlorine atoms are known to cause cancer of the liver I was taking a completely different tack. From my university days I remembered the professor talking about a “pseudo halogen” when referring to the cyanide group which consists of one carbon and one nitrogen atom. This chemical group is expected to metabolise to nitrogen and carbon dioxide and thus could do no harm to the human body as a chemical residue in vegetable, corn or fruit. After overcoming some chemical hurdles exchanging this group for chlorine atoms in household name pesticides I had been quite successful for some years although the new pesticides were biologically slightly less effective and also somewhat more expensive than their chlorine counterparts. However, since Schering had all my new compounds patented worldwide I regarded myself in safe territory.

It was only some five years later when the department head told me that although my chemical approach was quite impressive I should return to the so-called “small costal navigation”. This meant to give up my ecological approach to plant protection chemistry and to join the fold by reading through patents for “chemical gaps” that others had overlooked and fill them.

It soon became clear that I had to take a far reaching decision. Occupying a well-paid and respected position with Schering, being married with two young children and just having bought a new BMW, this decision was difficult to envisage. The only real alternative seemed to lie in becoming a teacher. With moral support from my wife I applied for a teachers’ training course and sold the BMW. Thus we reasonably well survived the following two years at low income. Afterwards I started teaching chemistry and physics at a grammar school in Hamburg. Although teaching youngsters is not always an easy job these days, I enjoyed it throughout my active 24 years as a teacher.

Apart from science I have always been fascinated by languages, even as a boy in Leipzig in former East Germany (GDR) when the only language being taught was Russian. After my schooldays English became my predominant foreign language. During my period of study at Frankfurt University I participated as an actor in several plays at the ‘Frankfurt Playhouse’ – then a facility for US-forces’ personnel. The funniest part was as a Cockney-bystander in Bernhard Shaw’s Pygmalion for which I had to take special Cockney-lessons. It was not the lines I had to speak during performances but mainly the discussions in a nearby pub after rehearsals that improved my fluency in speaking English considerably. When time was ripe to decide where to take my PhD in chemistry I successfully applied for a scholarship to take my PhD at University College London.

As a teacher I have often accompanied our students to our partner school in London and when the English students paid their return visits to Hamburg I showed them around Lüneburg, a beautiful medieval town southeast of Hamburg. Among teachers from both schools and on both locations we held regular parties in one of the teachers’ homes. During one of these parties we talked about what to do when reaching pension age. One of the English colleagues suggested that with my knowledge of English and my scientific background I should become a translator in the scientific field. Though not quite convinced at first I soon became hooked. In due course I enrolled in a translator’s course offered by the Chartered Institute of Linguists in London. Since having passed the exam from English into German in general knowledge, science and technology I enthusiastically and with passion work as a freelance translator in Hamburg.
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Dr. Erich A. Schmidt: Freelance translator in Hamburg; member of the American Translators Association (ATA) and of the Association of Translators and Interpreters in Northern Germany (ADÜ-Nord). For further details visit his website www.easdiptrans.de