Brief History

It all began in the summer of 1995, when I had finished the first year of my English philology studies at Wrocław University. Poland's largest cable operators' association was looking for someone to translate their planned monthly newsletter.

As I had a technical background from my technical secondary school, and my father had a business relationship with the newsletter's editor-in-chief, he recommended me to the man. The editor was rather relieved to have been spared the daunting task of finding someone to do the job.

Translating what was about 8,000 words took about two weeks, and earned me the equivalent of 100+ dollars. (Euro wasn't around at the time.) On top of that, I enjoyed the job immensely.

The summer before, I had spent a good month digging trenches to earn some holiday money, and managed to make about 80 dollars.

I did a quick math. A two-week job that was a lot of pleasure earned me much more than a real slog twice as long. I was hooked. Trench digging was definitely not my line of business.

Over the next seven years, I translated over 70 issues of the cable operators' monthly newsletter, and became an expert on cable communications. I also served as interpreter at the association's biannual conferences for six years.

Meanwhile, milestones came one after another. I passed my first translation test for an agency, reached my first million word mark, did my first Microsoft translation, then my first Nokia translation...

In 2000, things were going so well that I not so much made a decision as took an obvious step, and started my own freelance business, called TRANS at the time. After dividing my time between translation and English teaching for a two-year period, I became a full-time freelance translator in 2002, and have not looked back since.

With the quality, reliability, and punctuality I provide, I have been fully booked for over three years now. As a rough estimate, I have translated over 6,500,000 words since I entered the translation business.

In January 2007, following weeks of preparation, I rebranded my company as clarima and established my first separate business presence on the Web.