Luke in Ireland, 2008

1983 – 2001

The first 18 years of my life are by and large typical for an English child. Born in Canterbury, I grew up in a working town known as Chippenham in Wiltshire. King Arthur was supposedly based there when the marauding Vikings were roaming the North, where I currently live with my wife-to-be Rebecca.

With Irish, Welsh, French, Scottish and Korean roots in my ancestry and Bristol/Dublin based extended family, I always felt connected to other places. Moving to Ontario, Canada at the age of 7 only really added to that feeling. I was exposed to the French and Klingon languages and various other intergalactic cultures (via Star Trek, The Next Generation) which significantly increased my interest in words.

Moving around six different primary schools as a child made making and losing friends a reality quite soon on in my young life. But I settled on the family’s return to the UK into life in the Midlands, Derbyshire, where school was enjoyable and life was good.

2001-2007

I was to apply to 6 universities at the age of 17. I was ambitious, and put down some of the best universities in the UK, hoping to study French, secretly wanting to study Computer Science, but lacking the right subjects. I received two offers of the six I applied to – my grades didn’t quite match my ambition for French, either! These were Sussex and Paris. The University of London has a campus in Paris, where you study French for three years. I got an interview and was encouraged to attend by my mother.

At the interview, in my suit, I had to speak French. I had to show my interest in languages. Something I did, perhaps ill-advisedly, by speaking a sentence in Klingon that I had learned at seven years old. This did end up contributing to my acceptance on the course, but it was taking a risk too far and I haven’t used it since.

Struggling to make ends meet in the expensive city of light, I worked in various restaurants and bars throughout my years, meeting many self-employed ex-pats who had complete independence and freedom. This appealed to me. I went about setting up a translation company in my first year of University, Spearhedd Translations, but the website sadly underperformed. I think it must have been the end of the dotcom bubble. Or the absolute lack of business sense. But the seeds were planted.

Throughout the thorough French Studies course I followed, we covered all aspects of grammar, arts, theatre, cinema, literature and history. The best part of all, in terms of learning to speak French, was phonetics. We were in language booths with cassettes and headphones. We repeated sounds over and over, and learned the International Phonetic Alphabet, which is basically the English alphabet, plus some extra sounds that cover foreign languages. This was useful in showing us that French only has 30-40 distinct sounds, most of which are shared by English.  When it’s all laid out before you – grammar, history of the language and phonetics – you get an overview that helps with the complete understanding of what French is. This speeds up the learning process no-end.

In my last year of University I left an ad on a comic book website, hoping to capitalise on the burgeoning French comic market for translation. I was lucky to have my ad read, one full year later, by Cinebook, a company looking to sell Franco-Belgian comics in English in the UK, USA and around the world. That work continues to this day, with over 90 published comics now in my name and a great love for the stories involved. Of course there have been some outmoded illustrations along the way (stereotypical racial depictions being the biggest bugbear), but overall the stories are innocent, fun and often very smartly crafted texts.

While working various jobs in the UK and France, such as French customer service in the UK and English customer service in France (for Blizzard, the makers of World of Warcraft, with some 10 million subscribers) followed by more restaurant work, this time a Swedish restaurant in Perpignan, France. From there I moved to Sweden to live in Gothenburg, Piteå, Luleå, stopping by Skåne as often as I could. I picked up Swedish quicker than I did French, perhaps because of a concerted effort years previously to learn Swedish, combined with language training in French and masses of enthusiasm to prove my good friend Andreas wrong – Swedish could be spoken by an Englishman. During this period I worked as a full time freelance translator, starting relationships with agencies around Europe and continuing my work with Cinebook.

2008 – Present

Now landed back in the UK, I live in Melbourne, Derbyshire, the East Midlands. Here I sit and translate day-by-day, running my small collection of websites* and aspiring to continue to make a living from this independence and freedom-bearing line of work. Keeping me company while I work are the few other freelancers I’ve met in the town who do a great  job of keeping me on my toes outside of those hours.

I have become a member of several organisations, not least the Chartered Institute of Linguists who keep me up to date on all language-related issues. Sadly nothing has been written by them about Klingon, yet.

*linguaquote.com a site that makes buying translation easy
worldtowriters.com a translation and copy-writing agency
lukespear.co.uk my own portfolio site

Hobbies

Playing with technology toys, chess, language, self-employment, guitar, sound recording, photography, cooking, film, science-fiction, martial arts – Karate (kyokushin, wado-ryu), Capoeira, Ninjutsu, Judo, Tang Soo Do – all practiced to the deadly White Belt level, except for Tang Soo Do (Korean karate, like Tae-Kwon Do) in which I earned an Orange Belt. I moved country too often to grade!