Michael Ashdown

Editor and Translator for German

Born in New Zealand, Michael gained his BSc (Hons) in Botany at Victoria University, Wellington, and also engaged in postgraduate studies in landscape planning and design. He later spent nearly fifteen years living in Munich, Germany, working for the first nine years in an environmental planning consultancy as a landscape ecologist.

However, Michael also developed his linguistic skills during his time in Germany, and spent his later years there working as a freelance German-to-English translator and editor for a range of specialist art books and articles for publication in scientific and medical journals. He joined NZTC International in August 2002.

Quote

‘When I started learning German in 1986 for travelling abroad, I thought of learning a new language as a game to see just how far I could take it. Nearly 25 years on, many of them spent living in Germany, I’m still going, raising the bar higher and higher – with translation, you can never know too much, and at NZTC there’s always something new to learn every day.’