About Me

Fifteen years of Land Surveying

For more than fifteen years I worked as a Land Surveyor, with secondments to the Gasunie, DHV and the Cadastre. I pioneered GPS detail measurements, I got to know the "black box" from the inside! In the 90's I did more and more ICT work, culminating in a very interesting secondment to the Municipality of Utrecht: creation of a data model for the computerised valuation of non-residential real estate. This involved lots of queries and consultations with the valuation and taxation departments.

Ten years as an English Teacher

In 2003 I obtained a Dutch teaching certificate for English. For ten years I worked at a "VMBO" school, a pre-vocational school. I set up the first field trips to England for these very practically-minded students. Our students were coupled with English students and followed lessons at English schools.

Translating

Since 2003 I also started translating. I even translated English to Dutch for a while, for Stichting "De Tabernakel" who produce Dutch sermons by English puritans. I still translate the odd English text into Dutch. But as an English native speaker I am of course best at Dutch to English. I was in the translation team for "At Thy Alter Bending", a book of meditations and an informative column by the late Rev. De Jongste. I work with Trados, a translation program which speeds up the translation process and provides certain quality controls.

Freelance Work

Although I have been working freelance for a while, I didn't set up my company till 1 October 2013. Banfield's English Language Services aims to do anything which has to do with English, starting with translations, tuition and interpreting.