PS Technical Translations      

Peter Staddon   
B.Sc. (Hons) Mechanical Engineering, M.Sc. Ergonomics   

Staatlich geprüfter Übersetzer / State-certified translator

About me

I was born and bred in Sunderland in North East England. 

I graduated from the University of Nottingham with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1984. Having spent the next year on a ''grand tour'', mainly in German-speaking countries, I rounded off my formal education with a Master's Degree in ergonomics at the University College London in 1986. After two years working as an ergonomist in England, I moved to Munich at the end of the eighties to improve my knowledge of German and to get to know German culture at first hand.

From 1989 till 1998 I worked as an engineer in the engineering department at Crown Trucks, one of the largest forklift truck manufacturers on the American market. Alongside my responsibilities as a design engineer, I was quickly able to perfect my technical vocabulary whilst translating the American engineering development guidelines into German.

In 1998 I moved to Jungheinrich to take up a position as a project manager for the development of electric and ICE counterbalanced forklift trucks. Due to my language skills and my knowledge of the products I had plenty of opportunities to translate demanding technical documents into English: presentations, training material, error code lists, product marketing info sheets.

I enjoyed these translation tasks to such an extent that I then went on to do a course at the AKAD Acadamy in Stuttgart to prepare for the state exam to become a state-certified translator for English and German. 

At the end of  2011 the time was ripe to take the next big career step: to set up business as a freelance technical translator.  

In May and October 2012 I took the written and oral state exams and am now officially a state-certified translator.