I have been working in field of linguistics and languages since 1997, always deeply passionate about language for as long as I can remember; I love analising the structure and evolution of language and how, perhaps, it shapes people. 

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The sharper-eyed among you might realise that I am creating a Constructed Language (conlang) for by novel series The Empyraeum Cycle and have gone to a stupendous amount of effort, devoting far more time than is probably sane to that goal. But I love language; my love of poetry (the reading and writing thereof) stems from it allowing one to be playful with language and test its limits. 

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I learned Spanish very quickly and, for the most part, from having to speak it in order to communicate with my Dominican wife, in fact we mostly continue to speak Spanish about the house. 

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I find working on a complex translation to be quite therapeutic in a possibly strange way; getting the meaning across and the context just right from source to target language is a knotty puzzle I like to unpick. I seek perfection in my work although I'm fully aware this is impossible. 

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With teaching, it is my first and enduring love. I recall my younger students with fondness and often wonder what they're doing today and how they made use of what I taught them. See, it's young minds and their absolute receptiveness to learning that motivate me more than any other thing. 

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I'll tell you a story, many years ago, when I first moved to America, I landed a job near the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Nearby were the packing and processing plants for the locally important fishing industry. The menial work there, gutting fish by hand, slopping them out and so forth was done by migrant workers, mostly from Latin America. It was a terrible job, badly paid and exhausting for them, never getting the smell out of their hair and skin, their health suffering as an alleged result. It was a dead end with little to no hope of improvement what with them speaking little to no English and often lacking a formal education.

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I got a job with a foundation that helped their children, teaching them English and I will tell you, I have never had a more enthusiastic or receptive audience! They knew, you see, that I was their chance at a better life than that of their parents, at their young age (early pre-teens to teenagers), they knew that. 

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That if I could help them master English and the foundation could then get them educated, they'd never have to slop fish guts like mom and dad did. 

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The fulfilment and sense of purpose that gave me is impossible to describe but for the first time in my professional life, I was doing something truly worthwhile; I was doing something that mattered.  

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I could change lives, directly and for the better. 

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I wonder now where those eager children, so full of hope, are today. I'd still be doing that job now if I could, even if I had another full-time job (it was part time and my hours were cut), I'd find the time for them. 

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That is why I love being a teacher, because teachers really can make a positive difference in a child's life. A good teacher can.

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The passion for this calling of mine is easy to see when I am with students of any age or background, I do it for free if I didn't have bills to pay. 

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Offering translation to and from Spanish, online English teaching and tutoring, editing and correction of written material. 

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