David Jemielity is Senior English Translator and Head of Translations at Banque Cantonale Vaudoise (BCV), in Lausanne, Switzerland. BCV is a mid-sized bank with CHF 40bn in assets and five to eight translators covering English, French, and German. Since taking over BCV’s translation team in 2004, Dave has fundamentally changed the way translating is done at the bank, rebuilding translation processes around fluid, often face-to-face communication between his translators and their clients and emphasizing target-text readability and effectiveness. This has involved, among other things, changing the sort of people BCV hires as translators.
Dave is also a tenured faculty member of the University of Geneva’s School of Translation and Interpretation, where he teaches in the graduate program for aspiring French>English translators. His main areas of research interest are target-text effectiveness in financial translation and translation process design and management, and he has spoken on these issues at various conferences in Europe and the U.S., most recently Lisbon (2010), Luxembourg (2010), Denver (2010), and the Catskills (2011).
Dave studied English and philosophy at Amherst College (BA) and 18th century English literature at Oxford University (MPhil). He then taught English literature for several years at the universities of Lausanne and Neuchâtel. He moved into translation in the late 1990s, mainly because he found many Swiss and French companies’ English communications fascinatingly awkward and figured it might be fun to help them out.
When he is not busy being a language geek Dave spends his time backcountry skiing, mountaineering, trail running, and cycling. He has published several articles on these and other endurance-sports subjects. He has also written on translation, most recently for the Swiss Translators’ Association Journal, in a special issue on the future of the profession (Hieronymous, April 2010).
