About

Hi, welcome to my blog! I write from Murcia in the south of Spain. Read on to find out what I write about, how it will help you improve your Spanish (or English) at no cost and who I am.

My blog

I write so you can read my ideas and so that we can develop our thoughts together on the following topics in which we share a common interest, so that I can learn a bit more about life and so that I can talk to interesting people like you about how to improve it.

I write about:

1. Spanish business, Spanish culture, Spanish law, Spanish politics, the Spanish language;
2. UK business, UK culture, UK law, UK politics, the English language;
3. Translating English & Spanish, Spanglish Lex.

I want to participate in the global conversation, teach you all I know about these topics and learn alongside you. I am very interested in blogging as a tool for teaching, learning and communication, as well as it being an international meeting point and a place from which to do more and better business.

The posts are a mix of interesting links, opinion and comment and you can leave your comments and ideas at the end of each post.

Improve your Spanish with my blog and The Spanglish Lex List

I publish all my blog posts in English and Spanish. I translate them so that you can compare them and learn more each day. I record the audio for each post so that you can listen and read at the same time to ideas about current affairs topics we’re interested in.

To switch between the English and Spanish versions of the same post, click on the little flag below the title and to listen as you read, click on the arrow below the little flags.

Here is an example of a properly formed post: ¿Puedes aprender a pronunciar bien en inglés a través de Skype?

I try and publish at least one new post each weekday. I’m recording the audio for the old posts bit by bit.

The Spanglish Lex List

The Spanglish Lex List (you can sign up here for free) is a set of two exercise worksheets which I email every Monday to my list of subscribers. Every e-mail contains the links to two PDF files which contain:

1. a short (aprox. 300 words) text about current affairs;
2. a vocabulary list related to the topic;
3. sentences which you can try and translate from English into Spanish and vice-versa.

The texts, the vocabulary and the exercises are advanced Spanish and English and follow a pattern of culture – business – law – politics every month. The English text is about some aspect of life in the UK and the Spanish text about life in Spain. In this way, you learn a bit more about what’s going on in Spain and you learn to explain what’s going on in the UK to Spanish speakers.

I will soon start to publish more beginners level exercises to help you learn and revise even more, and the plan over the next few months is to create a virtual learning space where we can all discuss different answers and the topics together.

Spanish Legal and Commercial Translation

Professionally, you will discover that I work as a translator in the Spanish legal and commercial translation field, translating English and Spanish documents for businessmen and lawyers so that they can do more and better business in the UK and Spain. If I can help you with that, please read this page here and then get in touch with me here.

I also teach a few English classes here in Murcia for those businessmen, lawyers, accountants, doctors and other professionals who ask me to.

I have a degree in Modern Languages and Linguistics (French & Spanish) from the Manchester Metropolitan University and I have worked with words and communication in different business contexts since I graduated.

I also do some volunteer translation for the Global Voices Lingua project, a fascinating initiative which aims to “work together to bring you translations and reports from blogs and citizen media everywhere, with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media“.

Some (possibly) interesting things about me

• I speak French. My aunty was kind enough to marry a Frenchman, which means I have two French cousins, which led to lots of holidays when I was a youth, which meant I met lots of French girls, which led to my love of languages and much later on to my degree, during which I lived in Nantes for six months. I might start blogging in French as well one day but there are only 24 hours in a day;
• I used to be an infantry officer in the British Territorial Army, in a regiment called the Cheshire Regiment, which no longer exists. I drank beers and trained with lots of blokes who had just come back from (and kept going back to, in some cases) the war in Bosnia, where they had been the first UN ‘peacekeepers’. They said that most of the time there wasn’t much peace to keep;
• In my final year at university, I entered the annual national student writing competition run by D&AD and The Guardian and won, with a short story titled ‘Sad Black Bastard‘. It’s about perceptions and immigration;
• I lived and worked in Stockholm for six months as a copywriter for the Publicis advertising agency. I started learning Swedish and would love to take it up again one day. It was in the winter and thus very cold, but Stockholm is a very beautiful city;
• In 2001, I managed to win a place on the El País Journalism Master’s degree after a lot of study, the first English speaker to do so in 12 years, apparently. Unfortunately, I couldn’t accept the place because I didn’t have any money. Over time, this led to me becoming much more interested in business;
• I worked in Moscow for three months in the winter of 2002 as a business journalist. Again, it was very cold (even colder than Stockholm);
• I was once in a terrible train accident here in Spain, in a village called Tobarra, when I was travelling between Madrid and Murcia one night. I was extremely lucky: the train split in two behind my seat and everyone forward of it was killed or injured;
• In 2003, I decided it would be a good idea to start working for myself. It was. I started to learn a lot about small business.
• In 2006, business was going so well that it seemed like a good idea, and the next logical step, to create a company, which I did. It wasn’t the right move, however, so, in January 2009, after two years as its Managing Director, I left the company I had created and started working for myself again. Things are improving.
• I like running. I keep telling myself that one day I will run a marathon or two. It might be true.
• In the meantime, among many other things, I enjoy eating well and discovering Spanish wines.

I look forward to reading and replying to your comments and ideas on my posts! Hopefully, we will learn something.