about me

cropped painting of a bookcase full of books and notebooks with a vase of flowers and a colourful rug in foreground

The library (1921) by Félix Vallotton (part). Painting held in the Musée Départemental du Prieuré, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France. Public domain.

I’m a qualified and experienced language professional, originally from Belgium and based in Melbourne (Australia) since 2005. Books, languages and learning have always been particular interests of mine. I’ve studied languages in school and at university and I’ve worked as a library technician, a bookseller, a freelance language teacher, a translator, an image and copyright researcher, and lately as an editor and proofreader.

I’ve worked at Macmillan Education (Australia) for seven years (2008–15), in various roles in both the image and copyright research department and the editorial department, including four years as Editor (and Senior Editor), mainly working on projects for secondary education. Since late 2015, I’ve been self-employed while I’ve also worked in various casual and contracted part-time in-house roles.

expertise

Most projects I’ve worked on so far have been complex, full-colour and highly illustrated print books (more often than not with a digital component), but I’ve also worked on both simple and complex black-and-white publications. I’ve been involved in the re-versioning of a printed workbook to an iBook. I’ve worked on a digital-only project (a language app) for over a year. I also have experience in making corrections in HTML.

qualifications

  • Graduate Diploma in Editing and Publishing, awarded by RMIT (Melbourne)
  • CELTA (Certificate in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages), awarded by Cambridge University (UK)
  • Certificate of Proficiency in English (now called C2 Proficiency), awarded by Cambridge University (UK)
  • MA Oriental Philology (Japanese Studies), awarded by Ghent University (Belgium)

language skills

  • Dutch (fluent)
  • English (fluent)
  • French (very good)
  • Danish (good)
  • Swedish (basic)
  • German (basic)
  • Other: I’ve also studied Latin (six years) and Ancient Greek (five years) in secondary school, and Classical Chinese (four years) and Modern Japanese (four years) at university. While I don’t speak these languages (the first three are so‑called ‘dead’ languages and over the years my Japanese has become quite rusty), they’ve been invaluable for my understanding of other languages.

memberships

Institute of Professional Editors Ltd (IPEd)

get in touch to discuss your editorial needs