simone caffari – Translator

I started working in translation by bringing together a great variety of interests and a passion for my native Italian and English, the language I have always felt closest to. I specialise in the social sciences thanks to my studies in Italy (History) and the UK (Social Anthropology), and I have published a number of monographs and articles. My career began with a collaboration with the prestigious review Quaderni Storici, from which I moved on to translate monographs both for private clients and in collaboration with Italian publishers - most recently with LEG Editore.Experiences in intercultural mediation, music, theatre and storytelling have expanded my linguistic sensibility towards fiction, folk music and oral culture. For example, a passion for Anglo-American folk music has brought me to translate the lyrics used by Mariano De Simone to tell the story of the USA through song in his books. Working for Ruotalibera Teatro, a Rome-based theatre company, gave me the opportunity to become a bilingual storyteller and interpreter for international theatre workshops. Mine is a hands-on approach to living between my two languages, where everything becomes translation.I have lived in Scotland since 2008, and for the past 10 years I have been working on and off at Blackwell's, the busiest bookshop in town, one of the best places to come across new authors and to be exposed to some of the most interesting contemporary fiction and non-fiction.There are books, and there is music in my life. While in my native Rome I studied American folk music, here in Edinburgh I went back to my own roots and front a band that explores the dialects of Italy and their musical traditions, presenting them to enthusiastic Scottish audiences. Yet another effort in cultural as well as linguistic translation!