Chris handles translations from French to English and draws on a long-standing network of native mother-tongue colleagues for translations in other language pairs.

“I have always had an affinity for France,” says Chris. “On a clear day, from the village where I grew up in East Sussex, I could make out Boulogne across the sea and from a young age I had a series of French pen friends who would visit me each summer or vice versa.

After leaving school, I spent a gap year in Paris before beginning my degree course at University College London. This included a year teaching English in a lycée in the beautiful city of Montpellier, which confirmed my love of the country, its culture, history and language.

Having graduated with a BA Hons (2:1), I began working as chief sub-editor on local newspapers in Canterbury and would frequently take an evening ferry across to Calais to enjoy a three-course set menu there.

Within a few years, having married and planning a family, France again beckoned. By the time our two children were born, my wife and I had renovated a farmhouse in the foothills of the Pyrenees. During this time I set up a translation business catering to large corporate clients requiring translation into English of contracts and court documents, websites and brochures, and other commercial and technical materials. We stayed for just under a decade, bringing up our young family, before deciding to make the move back across the Channel to my wife’s native Cheshire.

We set up TLC Translation Ltd in 2013 to continue providing technical, legal and commercial translation services to our existing base of French clients.”