Who am I?

My name is Roger Matthews and I work under the name Devon Translations offering professional translation services for commercial, legal and technical documents from German and Swedish into English.

After completing a BA (hons) degree in modern languages (French and German) at King’s College London, I trained to be a secondary school teacher at Cambridge University. I soon moved from teaching teenagers to teaching and training adults as an EFL teacher.

As a mature student, I went back to college to study law, gaining a post-graduate diploma in law and then completing the LPC for solicitors in the UK. I practised law briefly but soon returned to the classroom to train young professionals in writing and presentation skills.

This took me to Sweden and my first professional translation work – I had picked up the language through living in the country and was soon proofreading translations into English for the CEO of the company. This sparked my love of translation and although it took several years before I was doing it full time, I have never really looked back.

Over the years I have lived in many different countries, including Austria, Germany, Sweden, Czech Republic, France, Thailand and Kenya, but in my mid-forties I decided to come home to Devon to be near family and to put down roots.

I live near the sea in Torquay, where I sing in choirs, row on the sea and do a bit of running. I see it as a privilege that I can do the work I enjoy in a place that I love.