Helga studied at the Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne and has lived in Germany, Switzerland, France and the US due to work reason and, above all, because she wanted to see more of the world. She's always thought that the best way to get to know the language, culture, defects and virtues of a country is to live in it until one turns (almost) native. As a translator, she's managed to bring together necessity and vocation, an excellent grasp of her source languages (ES, FR and EN), and the advantage of having in-depth knowledge of her adopted countries.
Her areas of specialisation include tourism, marketing and hotel management. She has wide-ranging experience of anything having to do with travel, art and culture, ranging from translating exhibition guides to adapting tourist industry websites. She's been collaborating with the Spanish Olympic Committee and other international bodies for a long time and, as a result of this, has also specialised in institutional documents and the management of large sporting events.
She settled in Madrid some time ago, where she's developed a practical interest in restoring furniture and traditional Spanish architecture. She still travels at the slightest opportunity and has lately shown a alarming predisposition for Far Eastern countries...
Oscar studied Literature and Philosophy in Lima, as well as Journalism in Madrid. In the editorial area, he's proofread texts and been involved in the graphic design of publications. Later, as a journalist, he wrote reports, articles and website contents on different fields, with a specialisation in IT. He's been dedicated to localisation and translation (EN-ES) for over ten years now, and has made incursions into technical and linguistic consulting, coordinating teams and teaching.
His work has forced him to gain hands-on knowledge about most localisation and editing tools, as well as to keep the ability to carry on learning. He thinks knowing how to write doesn't have to be incompatible with moving around code lines at will, and that choosing the right word (or font or colour) requires experience, intuition and well-grounded knowledge about the target and the context.
Due to his background, he's got contradictory interests: literature, computing, history and cooking, more or less in that order. His favourite cities: Madrid, Rome and London, not necessarily in that order. He's been collaborating with Helga Zimmermann for a couple of years now and together they've set up twotranslate, a personal and professional project to make the work of translating that little less lonely.
