Hello everyone! I’m Adam Yeomans, freelance linguist from Clevedon, near Bristol, in the UK, but now based in Ettlingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. I translate from German, French and Italian into English and have been running my one-man-band AY Linguistic since 2014. Without further ado, here’s what a typical day looks like for me …

I usually get up around 7 and go for a brisk 45-minute walk before having breakfast in front of the TV, then I move across to the computer for 8:30 at the latest. That walk, followed by a shower, something to eat and an episode of one of my favourite shows, is non-negotiable. It allows me to clear my head and process any complex thoughts or deadlines before I dive into demanding German or Italian texts (I do work with French, too, as I said, but most of the work I get these days is from German or Italian). All of this ensures that I’m in the right state of mind when I sit down at my desk, which is where the magic happens. 😉

My professional bubble is my dual monitor setup, which is absolutely essential for efficient working as I can translate on one screen (CAT tools of choice: Trados and MemoQ) and research on the other. My prized possession is actually the old QWERTY layout keyboard I had sent to me from the UK. Accidentallz tzping mz surname as Zeomans thanks to the German kezboard lazout and constantlz seeing an Ä appear when I think Iäve tzped the @ szmbol was hugelz annozing! Just using my old British keyboard has increased my efficiency no end.

I break for lunch at 12-1 and I tend to finish for the day at 5 or 6 – when I was single, I used to work into the night and at the weekends (don’t tell my clients! 🤫), but now I’m living with my partner, I obviously have to consider her schedule as well. Moreover, her mother doesn’t seem to understand what “self-employed” means … to her, being in gainful employment means working Mondays to Fridays, 9-5, and no more. She’s always perplexed, and concerned my work is taking over our lives, if she invites us over on a Saturday and I have to decline because I have a translation deadline looming. All of this is actually great motivation for maintaining better work-life boundaries.

As the amount of translation work coming in for me has started to ebb and flow more severely in recent years (*cough* Covid *cough Geopolitical Turmoil *cough* AI *cough*), I’ve had to embrace the “portfolio career” and diversify somewhat. I now offer private tuition to local schoolkids, have two clients taking the online “Speak English like a Brit” conversation course you might have seen me plugging on LinkedIn of late and am looking to branch out into monolingual copywriting. I’ve also started working at a local language school teaching English to adults to guarantee some extra income in translation-lean months.

Teaching’s great for adding a little variety to the day, but, more importantly, I feel it’s made me a sharper translator. Constantly teaching vocabulary and grammar and explaining complex concepts in English to German speakers forces me to revisit and consolidate my understanding of linguistic structures. It’s the ultimate professional development!

On a Monday, I tend to stop at 4:30pm and head out to the local pub, where I host the quiz night, and help the landlord set up. This weekly event is important for me to give back to the community that welcomed me with open arms when I arrived here in 2017. It’s an essential injection of socialising and networking that both forces me to speak to actual people after a full day of staring at text on a screen and allows my jovial, fun-loving personality to shine. On Tuesdays, my girlfriend and I always have a late lunch at the restaurant where we met – it’s our little ritual that’s become sacrosanct. These small, private commitments are what keep me grounded, help me maintain the focus and quality required for language work throughout the rest of the week and stop me from becoming a workaholic. From Wednesday to Friday, if I’m not translating, I’m teaching and vice versa.

It can be a demanding life sometimes, but blending my skills with my rituals, i.e. balancing my time at my desk, in pubs and restaurants and in the classroom, ensures my clients can collaborate with a focused, sharp and highly adaptable linguist – not a stressed and burned-out workaholic.