I am Wesley Gerrard. I am a 36 year old male who has worked in music for most of his life. I have always had a passion for languages. From the age of about 13 I used to spend every summer alone with a French family in the southwest of Aquitaine where I learnt to speak that beautiful language well. I also studied Spanish in school. I received the maximum grades of A in French GCSE, a in French O Level and A* in GCSE Spanish. After leaving school I maintained an interest in languages, speaking Spanish and French wherever possible. At the age of about 25 I decided to go back to college and in a year at Coleg Gwent, Newport, I passed an A Level French with an A grade and AS level Spanish with an A grade also.

Seven years ago I was drawn to studying at the Cardiff Centre For Lifelong Learning. At LEARN there were plenty of language night classes to choose from and I decided to diversify my experience of foreign languages and have taken courses there in French, Spanish, Italian, German, Arabic, Russian and Mandarin Chinese. The staff at LEARN persuaded me to take the Pathways to a degree scheme and as of September 2014 I am embarking on a full-time Translation (BA) at Cardiff University through Pathways.

My aim is to retrain as a professional translator and move from a career in music into a new interesting work environment. Hopefully I will get a good degree qualification and further necessary professional qualifications. I aim to specialise in translation from Spanish and French into English but I am also open to working with other foreign languages. I am keen on the tech environment and the possibilities of machine translation and CAT (Computer-Aided Translation) excite me a lot.

Dragon Translate is my new business, built in anticipation of the future work I intend to do. First up is getting the degree and then I guess, Dragon Translate will seek to work as a Translation service. Ideally we can partner up with a larger agency to gain work. We hope to build up a good reputation in this new market and deliver high quality work. I’d like to work in the field of entertainment, an area I know well, though am open to all areas and have a wide general knowledge that could be applied to translation in politics, culture, law, medicine, sports, education.

I guess for the first few years I will be documenting on http://dragontranslate.com my progress in my studies. I hope that the website will provide a good base for the successful future Dragon Translate to launch. If it helps inspire other students and potential translators then all the better.