Astrid Elke Witte, born in 1957

Born in Yorkshire, England, with an English father and a Northern German mother, Astrid's interest in languages developed when she was still a child. Already at the age of eight she was reading an English grammar book in bed every night and, to this day, she makes it a point to hone her English to a high, professional standard. She studied English (including linguistics), French and divinity at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, being awarded the degree of Bachelor of Divinity in 1988. Following graduation, she completed a one-year course in commercial French and German, along with advanced word processing skills, in turn leading to the London Chamber of Commerce and similar qualifications, where she notably gained distinction in translating from and summarizing German.

She has been working in Germany as a translator since 1997.

She spent most of 1998 translating a book from German into English about the economy, industry, and educational and research system in Saxony-Anhalt. From Autumn 1998 until the end of 2004 she was employed at the offices of patent and trademark lawyers in Munich as a legal secretary, so that it was simply a logical consequence for her to specialize, as a translator, in intellectual property. Has experience translating

• briefs, decisions and judgements on trademark infringements, as well as design and utility model infringements
• oppositions and substantiations of oppositions on Community trademarks
• nullity suits and cancellation actions
• appeals, grounds of appeal
• protective briefs
• preliminary injunctions in trademark cases
• certificates of registration in home country
• priority documents
• lists of goods and services
• trademark certificates
• warning letters and cease and desist undertakings
• a commentary on the German Design Model Act  

Since 2005, she has, in a freelance environment, also gained extensive experience in translating agreements, terms and conditions of business, company law documents, financial documentation, financial statements, annual reports, income statements, management reports (with her combined financial and accounting translation experience amounting to some 280,000 words as of February 2012), and documents of a similar nature.

Upon obtaining the internationally highly esteemed Diploma in Translation from the Chartered Institute of Linguists (officially recognized in the UK, as being equivalent to a Master's Degree) in the language combination German > English in the subjects of General Translation, Business and Law, in 2004, she became a Member of the Institute of Linguists.

Astrid's main language pair is German to English. However, she has to date translated at least 140,000 words in French to English (status: September 2015). Fields have included intellectual property (including patent claims), contract law, company law and administrative law.

For the past 5 years she has had a very fruitful cooperation with Sebastian Witte, during which the duo have built up their own quite extensive terminological databases, enabling them to tackle various specialist fields with terminological precision. They got married in December 2014.