Technical writer, German to English translator, and scholar

carpenter 3-2I have worked as a technical writer, content strategist, translator, and most recently as a teacher of German at the university level. Whether it is explaining how pluperfect tense works in German, teaching someone how to fix a paper jam in their printer, or presenting a paper at an academic conference, I aim to make information easy to understand and to help people develop cross-cultural understanding and awareness.

From my time teaching English in China, Austria, and Germany as well as teaching German in the US, I have had to teach people about history and culture of different countries. Someone from Spain might have a different idea of what professional business writing looks like, just as we speak differently whether we are talking to our boss at work or friends at a bar. This informs even monolingual courses, such as teaching freshman college students to write academic essays. It is essential to be aware of the different ways that we speak and the different cultures that surround us to be able to communicate effectively with different audiences.

My dissertation in German literature, focuses on writers from former-Yugoslavia who write in German and use German loanwords in their respective languages to name and describe incidents of trauma that they experienced, either during World War II or the breakup of Yugoslavia.