Translation & Adaptation
The Crossing
Language that resonates is more of an art form than an exact science. Translating meaning accurately rarely poses an issue, and large language models produce perfectly workable results.
But a perfectly workable text is not the same as one that manages to retain its message and voice while being imbued with the flavour of foreign shores. Translating the soul of a text, its feel, its particular way of landing, is a craft that relies on intuition as much as technique. Language obeys rules, yes, but it is also the only vessel uniquely designed to convey the infinity of human experience and emotion, its subtle granularity felt rather than told.
This liminal space between art, linguistic expertise and empirical experience is exactly where I work.
The Shape of Language
Every text is trying to do something. Not just say something — do something. Whether it's creating trust, or desire, or the particular comfort of feeling understood, that intention needs to be named before a word moves between languages. Because what achieves it in French and what achieves it in English are often two entirely different things.
Sometimes, the most faithful words get the intention lost.
Register shifts, cultural assumptions change, and what reads as warm directness in one language can land as bluntness in another. What sounds authoritative in French can feel cold and distant in English, or move from compelling in English to arrogant and salesy in French.
This is the question I bring to every translation: What is this text doing rather than saying — and how do I translate that action to let it land the same way on the other side?
The Weight of Intention
The moment a text reveals itself as a translation, it stops working. At best. At worst, it becomes a faux pas. And it's an easy mistake to make, thanks to the confidence sufficient knowledge can foster. Mastering another language at a native level, however, means dissolving your own cultural framework entirely — thinking, feeling, and reaching for words the way a native speaker would.
This is how I reconcile the words in the target language with what I know the original is doing (or purposely not doing).
The method draws on the principles of literary translation, but can be applied to any piece of writing, from the website that needs just the right edge to click with a French audience, to the blog article that must leverage culturally meaningful examples to make its point.
From one world to the next
What Travels
This Service Covers
Website copy & brand narratives
Product & category pages
Blog articles & editorial content
Marketing & campaign content
Bilingual content strategy
Cultural adaptation & localisation
Literary & creative translation
Fiction, essays & narrative non-fiction
“The limits of my language mean the limits of my world”
