Please drop me an email at martajane@mjtranscribes.xyz. I will respond immediately, or I can gladly call you from my landline so we can discuss any concerns you may have. I generally maintain office hours between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Central Time (one hour behind the US if Daylight Savings is in effect, as Mexico no longer observes DST).
I think my personal background would be illustrative of my journey with languages, English being the first, and now, once again due to my career in transcribing, of foremost importance.
I have always felt a call to help others using language. Even in my advanced placement English classes way back in high school, I was the one that people would ask to help edit and review essays and correct assignments, and I had a great deal of fun doing so. Later on, in order to enter college, I took placement exams for English and French and was thankfully required to take only two of the four English semesters normally needed to complete my college degree (in anthropology, not English) and only one semester of French. After college, I decided to jump at the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to travel extensively in Europe, where after two years, I married and settled down in Germany.
During my residency in Germany, a little over two decades, I was an English trainer and teacher for foreign language correspondents while at the same time teaching myself the German language using grammar books and asking plenty of stupid questions. Learning German is not an easy task for anyone ever, but I’d eventually reached the point where you wouldn’t be able to distinguish me from other native speakers of German, so fluent had I become. That fluency did come at the price of practicing my own native tongue, however, which indeed became a bit rusty for lack of use! Interestingly, English speakers in Germany tended to have a British accent, not American, due to the proximity of the UK, and also because my area of residence in Northern Germany had once been British-occupied territory after WWII.
Enter a new life phase as a resident of Mexico starting four years ago. Here in Mexico, I am not able to pick up the Spanish language as quickly as I did German because I speak German at home, not Spanish or English, and mostly English with my expat friends who often speak English as a foreign language themselves. I came to realize that I would need more regular contact with the native English-speaking world before losing my fluency entirely, thus I chose the transcription path to help maintain my English. At the same time, to keep the language salad interesting, I am now learning Spanish slowly on the side.
I have learned that indeed, language is the ticket through which you can accomplish goals in life, which, when you live in the country where your native tongue is spoken, you tend not to question much. Now, living and learning my fourth language, Spanish, (I had a brief stint learning Amharic, the language of Ethiopia, besides French and German), I want to use my knack for language to help others.
Another reason I am well-suited to being a legal transcriptionist is that I am a bit of a perfectionist, having lived so many years in Germany, a country known for its bustling punctuality and efficiency. I have a keen eye for detail, and my unsung mission in life is to do everything well. These are talents and abilities that I will put to hard work for you, if you entrust me with your transcription work, which I would most heartily welcome.
Thank you for reading!