I am a native English speaker, born in the UK. I have been bilingual since birth and my language pair is Polish-English. I frequently travel to Poland and my husband, like myself, was born in the UK, but has Polish roots. I am a non-practising solicitor, and work as a freelance interpreter/translator.


I qualified as a solicitor of the Senior Courts of England and Wales in 2007, and worked in the fields of medical negligence and personal injury until 2010. Prior to qualification, my two years of training saw me gain experience in the fields of family law, criminal law and personal injury.


For most of my career post-qualification, I worked at a Polish-English law firm, where approx. 90% of the clients were Polish nationals. I was required to speak and write in Polish, and translate various documents from English into Polish, and Polish to English on a daily basis. The area of law I specialised in also meant that I was exposed to medical terminology daily. Upon moving to my subsequent law firm, where my Polish client contact was extremely limited, I realised that I missed using my linguistic skills and that in fact, thatwas the part of my work that I had enjoyed the most. This spurred me on to changing my career path to become a freelance interpreter/translator.


My current workload consists mainly of interpreting assignments for medical negligence and personal injury law firms.My main clients are law firms, including a leading personal injury firm, with offices around the UK.


My interpreting assignments see me accompanying firms’ Polish clients to appointments with medical experts, where the given firm has commissioned a medical report on the client’s injuries / negligent medical treatment. The medical appointments range from simple to the complex, requiring in depth knowledge of medical terminology. I have worked with various medical experts, from orthopaedic consultants and neurologists, to psychologists, psychiatrists and neuropsychologists to name a few. Each medical specialism requires different specialist linguistic knowledge on my part. I interpret both consecutively and simultaneously; I regularly receive very positive feedback from the medical experts whom I visit with clients – I am often told that I am significantly more competent than many interpreters with whom they had worked with in the past, and that in their experience, native English interpreters (working in the Polish-English language pair) are a valuable rarity. I receive similar feedback from firms’ clients, several of whom have asked specifically that I be sent to interpret at their appointments, if at all possible.


Aside from my interpreting assignments, I have also worked for commercial enterprises, assisting with translation of company documents for Polish speaking staff. In addition, I provide translations and proofreading from Polish into English. I have successfully passed two of the required three modules of the IoL Diptrans Exam, and I am awaiting the results of the third, which I took this year.