Profile

Tania Gordon Aitken graduated in French and Spanish from the University of the West of England before joining the staff of the Consulate General of Spain in Edinburgh as administrator/translator in 1987. This was followed by several years working in the sports and leisure industries in Spain in the 1990s, notably as a ski instructor in Sierra Nevada, where she taught skiing in four languages. She has enjoyed a life-long passion for sport and has spent many years of her life immersed in the cultures of both France and Spain.

On her return to Scotland, she studied for the post-graduate diploma in European Marketing at Napier University in Edinburgh. This course included an in-depth study of the subtitling market in France and she later joined London-based subtitling company, Voice and Script International as production assistant/in-house translator. Returning to her native Scotland in 1997, she worked as contracts manager for Edinburgh-based tour operator Osprey Holidays, contracting hotels and suppliers throughout Europe and writing and editing brochures and travel guides. During this period, she studied for the Diploma in Translation, specialising in business and technology, and the Diploma in Public Service Interpreting, specialising in Scots law, from the Chartered Institute of Linguists, http://www.iol.or.uk, obtaining both qualifications in 1999.

Taking a break after her children were born in 2000, she began her freelance career in 2002. Since then she has been providing translation and interpreting services to a number of translation companies, businesses and private individuals in the UK, France and Spain.

In 2009/2010 she successfully completed the conference interpreting module of the MSc in Conference Interpreting and Translation at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh and added this mode of interpreting to her interpreting services that year, completing her first assignment at the UN Conference on Human Rights at the Scottish Parliament in October 2010. Her most recent assignment was a 3-day visit to the Scottish Parliament at Holyrood by a delegation from the Basque government, and a 2-day conference on the rare genetic disorder CDKL5 at Surgeons' Hall, Edinburgh, in June 2019.

Tania has been a part-time lecturer in Spanish to English translation and conference interpreting at Heriot Watt University since 2013.

She became a qualified Member of the Institute of Translation & Interpreting in July 2014.