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The Translator
Kate Ashton is a freelance writer, translator and copy editor, living in Scotland.
Kate trained as a nurse at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh. After gaining a diploma in ophthalmic nursing, she went on to work for three years as a W. H. Ross Foundation research assistant, setting up an electrodiagnostic unit for the Department of Ophthalmology at Edinburgh University as a member of a small team researching retinal disease, specifically retinitis pigmentosa.
Moving south, she spent a year as sister-in-charge of the operating theatre at the Royal Eye Hospital in London before joining the staff of Nursing Times, the professional journal then owned by London publishing house Macmillan. Beginning as a news reporter, she became news features editor before leaving the UK to live in the Netherlands. Here she continued her work as a journalist, and wrote several books, both fiction and non-fiction. She also trained and qualified as a classical homeopath.
After nearly 25 years in the Netherlands she returned to live in Scotland and now works for publishers in both Amsterdam and London, reading modern Dutch literary fiction, translating and writing to commission. She is a member of the UK Society of Authors and of its Dutch equivalent, the Vereniging van Letterkundigen.“The marrying of medical and literary interests is not uncommon", Kate remarks. "Both disciplines share study of the mystery and uniqueness of human life and energy. Both ask the same questions: what sparks us into health or sickness, what makes someone design a garden, build a bridge, invent an artificial heart, write a book or paint a canvas full of sunflowers? A sense of wonder has always inspired those who have most loved their work. I belong to these lucky ones.”
About ‘Inventor for Life’...
Kate remarks: ‘This is an amazingly fresh and vivid account of the life of a unique doctor and a remarkable man. These two cannot be separated, and author Herman Broers traces both private and professional lives of his subject as they interweave and inform each other. In doing so, he builds a clear picture of the complex man who is Pim Kolff and provides deep insights into how he became a physician impassioned by the desire to invent viable substitutes for human organs."
"This is a biography written by a journalist who understands the power of ‘no frills’ writing. Unembellished by descriptive ornament or subjective interpretation, the story stands by and for itself. Writing like this is a pleasure to translate. I hope I have done justice to it.’
