In today’s Translator Talk, we spoke with English-to-French translator Eve Stenger. Having grown up in a bilingual family, her mother British and her father French, it’s no wonder Eve quickly set her sights on a career in translation.
Eve specialises in subject areas that she is passionate about. These notably include tourism (her travel bucket list is longer than she’d care to mention!) and sports (she never passes up the opportunity to go mountain hiking), which are both closely linked to the field of marketing. She’d also like to work more on humanitarian and social content to contribute as much as possible to helping others through translation. In this interview, Eve shares insights into her work as a linguist.
How did you get into translation?
During my first year at university, I took a translation module not knowing anything about it. I experienced a sort of an epiphany which led me to study translation for a year at the University of Leeds before taking up a second master’s degree in professional translation at the Strasbourg IEMT institute.
After securing my degrees and completing a few internships here and there, I found a job in 2019 as an in-house translator for a UK-based agency. I have worked in the industry ever since, going freelance in 2022 when I moved back to France. I first reached out to the First Edition project management team in January 2024 and our collaboration began just a matter of weeks later.
What are your areas of specialisation?
I handle a whole range of content – the variety is a perk of the job. I particularly love translating for the hospitality sector, as it allows me to travel without leaving my office and learn a lot of new things about foreign traditions and cultures (a bit cliché but true!).
I also do a lot of marketing translations and what’s known in the industry as ‘transcreation’, e.g. for B2C websites or product packaging. This calls for solid knowledge of both the source and target languages and cultures, as it’s rare that a word-for-word translation hits the mark. The hardest part is probably coming up with a solution that works well and isn’t too long in French, since French tends to be 20% longer than English. So while it can sometimes be frustrating, there’s no feeling quite like pinpointing the right solution after you’ve been chewing over ideas for a while.
When it comes to your language combination, English to French, what particular aspects or challenges are there?
Particularly for creative copy such as ads or product descriptions the English copy tends to be much ‘louder’. Everything seems to be the tried-and-tested No.1 bestseller of the highest quality, whereas the French are much more reserved and understated. They’re not big fans of hyperbole and want to see proof if you claim something is the best. So it’s all about finding the balance between toning it down a bit, but still making it appealing to the target audience. Such texts also often rely heavily on wordplay and other stylistic devices, where a literal translation often doesn’t work. So you need to get creative and stray away from the words on your screen.
What is the best thing about being a translator?
No two days are the same. Although I’m sat in the same chair every day, my workload can differ entirely from one day to the next. I can imagine myself soaking up the sun in Italy while working on tourism content in the morning and then in the afternoon I’ll be figuring out the inner workings of toys for French kids to enjoy. Translating a wide variety of texts also means learning new things every single day, which I’m not sure is the case for every other job out there.
What has been your favourite First Edition project to date?
As previously mentioned, I’m very much interested in working on content that tackles social issues so when FE came to me to translate a document which combined sports and human rights, I was thrilled! Not only did I learn a lot of new things (whether these be facts or just being made more aware of things in general), I also felt part of something bigger, like I was translating for something that matters today and that could help people to shape and live in a better world.
Eve, thanks so much for our successful collaboration to date and for talking to us today!
If you’d like to know more about what Eve and First Edition can do for you, you can contact our multilingual project managers at enquiries@firstedit.co.uk.