Jennifer Busch
German to English translator and editor
Focus areas
Services
Insightful translation
Want to connect with an English-speaking audience?
Writing well takes precision, skill, and a whole lot of head scratching. Don’t let that hard work go to waste! Give your carefully crafted words the translation they deserve.
So what is a good translation?
One that brings the original text to life in a new language and culture, for a new audience.
To do this, a translator has to be a talented writer with an excellent command of both languages. They must fully understand the purpose, messaging, tone and audience as well as how to navigate any cultural or linguistic difficulties that arise. After all, the translation has to reflect the original and stand alone as an engaging text.
This is no mean feat – which is why you should hire a professional!
And why should you hire me?
I have the qualifications, skills, perceptiveness and creativity to translate your German words for an English-speaking audience both sensitively and effectively.
And I love translating – it combines all my professional skills and interests. I grew up in Yorkshire and travelled the world before settling down near Munich. In over a decade here I’ve gained dual nationality, near native-level German and an MA in Translation, which I studied alongside my role as a Copy Editor for McKinsey & Co. When I translate, I focus on rendering meaning in a way that sounds natural while being true to the original message and style.
If you’re in the market for a talented, creative translator to do full justice to your text, here I am!
Eagle-eyed editing
Looking to make your draft publication-ready?
The best copy is crisp and purposeful. It says exactly what it needs to say in just the right way. Make sure your text is clear, persuasive and perfect-for-purpose: hire an editor.
So what exactly do editors do?
Whether you need in-depth feedback to knock the overall structure and storyline into shape, a technical polish to make your final-final draft sparkle, or something in-between, I can help.
Explanations of editing levels vary, so here’s an overview of my definitions:
Editing
A comprehensive review of the higher-level features of your text, including the central argument, messaging, level of detail, target audience, structure, clarity, flow and tone.
I’ll make bigger-picture comments and suggestions to strengthen the backbone of your text, ensuring it is coherent, compelling and perfect-for-purpose.
Copy-editing
A thorough revision of your text, sentence by sentence, focusing on accuracy, clarity and style.
I’ll check grammar, facts, internal logic, and terminology as well as making suggestions about word choices or phrasing. Your text will read beautifully, and the messaging will be crystal clear.
Rewriting
A complete overhaul of your text, or agreed parts of your text. This typically requires one to two feedback loops and availability to answer questions.
After a full briefing, I will rewrite your content to make sure that the central argument is clear and persuasive, the structure sound, messaging logical, the language engaging, and the difficulty, level of detail and tone spot on for the target audience. In short, that it nails its purpose.
And why should you hire me?
I’m thoroughly trained and have buckets of experience as well as a mild addiction to continuing professional development. In feedback, I hear that my work is consistently excellent, even on complicated projects or under considerable time pressure, that I take text to the next level (or higher!), grasp concepts quickly, ask all the right questions, and that people enjoy working with me!
I spent nearly seven years as an in-house copy-editor for an international management consultancy, where the work often strayed into full-blown editing, so I’m no stranger to sharpening high-stakes business texts. And my voluntary role as Senior Copy Editor for prestigious online translation journal Asymptote has taught me how to apply my skills to literary texts, too.
If you want an editor who fully understands the brief and can deliver the results you need, get in touch!
I’m qualified and experienced: About me
I work on a range of projects: Samples
Any questions? I’m very friendly! Contact
Specialisms
Business élan
Business writing is second nature to me. In nearly seven years at international management consultancy McKinsey & Company, I worked on a rich variety of texts for diverse clients and industries. I edited and rewrote pitches, articles, voice-overs, websites, correspondence and major tenders so that they resonated with their target audience – and I can do the same for you.
And before switching to comms, I lived the business life myself…
Back in the UK, I worked in various roles for Network Rail. I began as a graduate management trainee, where I gained an in-depth understanding of how a large company operates by shadowing and completing projects for colleagues across the business. In this time I drafted the first Wessex route fatality management strategy, which compiled existing approaches and ideas from the area in a logical manner and would form the basis of a much broader project.
After a year, I was promoted to Mobile Operations Manager (emergency rail response), where I dealt with everything from fatalities to points failures to sheep on the line. I was additionally tasked with drafting an official MOM training plan for our area and creating a new database for logging our incidents. I received another promotion after a year and a half, this time to a project management role where my main responsibilities lay in drafting and maintaining scheme summaries and other project documentation for a route-wide infrastructure programme.
In summary, I’m a business professional with an analytical mind, problem-solving approach, excellent writing skills and a wealth of experience. If you engage me to work on your text, I’ll deliver a sharp and effective end product.
Literary prowess
I’ve always loved reading. As I child, I’d walk into lampposts because I was buried in a book, which is probably why I studied English Literature at York University. Fast-forward fifteen years of work, travel and further study, and one of the best things about my leap into freelance life is the freedom to choose and develop my own specialisms. Hello again, literature!
And I’ve been busy…
My translation of Beatrix Kramlovsky’s murderously fun short story ‘The Good Winemaker’ was published in the Nov/Dec 2023 issue of the award-winning Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, which has featured writers such as Ruth Rendell, Stephen King and Joyce Carol Oates.
This year, Audrey Delphendahl and I were shortlisted for the John Dryden Translation Competition with our co-translation of Ilse Aichinger’s award-winning 1949 short story ‘In the mirror’; our 2024 longlisted co-translation of Marie Luise Kaschnitz’s ‘Long Shadows’ was published in Asymptote. Isabel Hagedorn and I have also made the John Dryden longlist three times with novel extracts spanning genres. Samples here.
And I volunteer as a Senior Copy Editor for the award-winning online literary translation journal Asymptote, whose mission is ‘to unlock the literary treasures of the world’. It features incredible pieces of previously unpublished short fiction, poetry, literary non-fiction, interviews, critical essays and drama from 130 countries and counting. The quality is off the charts, and the contributors include a whopping nineteen Nobel Prize winners. And it’s free! If you don’t know it yet, do check it out!
In the background, I’ve been building up my portfolio (see Samples) and doing a ton of CPD, including attending Bristol Translates summer school (twice!) and the Goethe Institut Glasgow ‘Stammtisch’ and ‘Translation Lab’ events. I’ve also recently started writing my own micro and flash fiction, and my work can be found on fiftywordstories.com, 101words.org and forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine. (Hurrah!)
What this all means is that you can trust me with your beautiful literary text! I have a practiced, analytical eye and an experienced hand, so I can appreciate your work while making respectful editing suggestions or translating it, sensitively, into irresistible English.
Wine flair
Wine is fascinating! Since becoming a freelancer, I’ve shamelessly indulged the opportunity to develop my interests into specialisms, and I loved the WSET Level 3 Award in Wines – an advanced, professional qualification from a highly respected wine institution. I studied in German to make sure that, in both German and English, my wine terminology is on the nose (pun intended!)
And I learnt so much …
Previous wine prejudices fell by the wayside – I finally gave up on the idea that I adore an Haut-Médoc (I’d been very taken with a sample I tasted at Ô Château in Paris many years previously but had never quite relived that je ne sais quoi), realised I actually prefer a younger Rioja (gasp!), that whites from Burgundy and reds from the Côte-Rôtie are what give those quotes about wine as ‘bottled poetry’ their substance.
It was a revelation to be walked through the influence of winemaking while tasting a dull, cheesy Petit Chablis, clearly a victim of excessive malolactic conversion, against a beautifully crisp Chablis Premier Cru – making a strong case for the assertion that great wine is made in the vineyard. The winegrowing regions started to come to life in my head, and, thanks to the vivid descriptions of my tutors, I could feel myself in Jurançon, an Atlantic breeze racing up the river to the mountain vineyards, or in the northern Rhône with the mistral biting into my inadequately thin clothing…
I started being able to not only detect more subtle aromas but also begin to understand why they were there, could guess at winemakers’ decisions, speculate that the high acidity and pronounced flavour intensity could indicate a region with high diurnal range… My lasting impression is that glowing satisfaction of everything slowly coming together. Things that had been cold, hard facts began to take on more meaning, and the interplay between them was fascinating.
I love learning about wine, tasting wine, reading and writing about wine… and I’m an experienced and skilled language professional. This combination means I’m well-versed in wine terminology, understand specialist texts, and know what needs to be highlighted. Any wine writing you hire me to edit or translate will be precise and persuasive.
Contact details
I’m qualified, specialised and I care deeply about my work – I’ll go above and beyond to make your text perfect.
If you’re looking for a language expert, get in touch!
