Ali Yildirim, Chartered Linguist and Turkish translator
I’m a native Turkish translator, editor and copywriter based in Portsmouth, Hampshire, and I’ve worked between English and Turkish as a freelance linguist since 2005. Bosphorus Translation is my own practice: every translation is done, checked and signed by me, with no subcontracting.
I provide certified translation in both directions, Turkish to English and English to Turkish, for personal and official documents that the Home Office, HM Passport Office and UK universities accept. Alongside certified work, I offer a full range of other translation services for businesses and agencies, from legal, medical and technical translation to transcreation and Turkish copywriting, for brands such as Hilton, Google and Pernod Ricard.
- Chartered Linguist
- CIOL, membership no. 42759
- Qualified member
- ITI, membership no. 8695
- ISO 17100:2015
- Qualified translator standard
- Diploma in Translation
- Merit in Technology, Distinction in Law
- Since 2005
- 20+ years as a freelance linguist
- Both directions
- English to Turkish and Turkish to English
From archaeology trenches to translation
I didn’t set out to be a translator. I was born and raised in Turkey and studied classical archaeology at Istanbul University, where I taught myself Ancient Greek without a tutor. That habit of self-teaching is how I later learned English.
Zeugma to Kent
A job with a company I had worked with at the ancient site of Zeugma brought me to the UK. I spent two years at the Chatham Historic Dockyard teaching ancient crafts, and on digs in and around London, including excavations for the Channel Tunnel rail link.
Settling in Portsmouth
For four months I lived on a boat called Fisherman’s Wife in the Solent. If you drive the M275 into Portsmouth you may have seen her: she now lies beside the motorway and has become something of a local landmark. I moved into a house in Portsmouth at the beginning of 2003. My last archaeology job was in the vaults of a Bloomsbury church near the British Museum, then I turned to language work: teaching Turkish at a local language school, interpreting for Portsmouth City Council, and supporting Turkish-speaking refugee children in schools as a bilingual teaching assistant.
Going freelance
After passing test translations for an agency, I started working as a freelance translator. Early projects included proofreading and testing printer software and manuals at Canon’s UK headquarters in Bracknell, and work for the luxury phone brand Vertu.
Qualified and chartered
I sat the Diploma in Translation in 2010, earning a Distinction in Law, and completed it in 2012 with a Merit in Technology. Today I’m a Chartered Linguist and a qualified member of the ITI.
My work
Twenty years of writing for Turkish readers
Since starting out as a freelance linguist in 2005, I’ve helped brands, agencies and organisations speak to Turkish-speaking audiences in language that reads as though it was written in Turkish. That work has covered technology, marketing and transcreation, automotive, travel and hospitality, healthcare and business: subtitling for Google and YouTube, transcreating campaigns for Hilton, Marriott and Pernod Ricard, localising websites for companies entering the Turkish market, and translating public-health information for the NHS.
Two kinds of client, one translator
Individuals and families
Marriage, birth and divorce certificates, diplomas, driving licences and other personal documents for visas, passports, universities and courts. Each comes with my stamp and a signed, dated certificate of translation.
Certified Turkish translation services →Businesses and agencies
Websites, apps, subtitles, technical documentation and marketing copy. For campaigns I rebuild the idea rather than the sentence, so a pun, a cultural reference or a tagline still works for a Turkish reader.
Turkish translation services →How I work
What you can expect from me
What separates professional translation from a quick machine version is judgement: knowing how a phrase will land with a Turkish reader, where a brand’s voice needs protecting, and when a literal rendering would undermine the message. You deal with one accountable person from first message to delivery, bound by the CIOL and ITI codes of conduct. Terminology stays consistent across every job you send me, so a term signed off last year reads the same way this year, and your documents are deleted once the job is complete unless you ask me to keep a copy.
Translation and copywriting delivered for
- Google and YouTube
- Subtitling and audiovisual translation
- Hilton, Marriott, Pernod Ricard
- Campaign transcreation and Turkish copywriting
- NHS
- Public-health information translated into Turkish
Accredited, qualified and chartered
- Chartered Linguist, Chartered Institute of Linguists (MCIL CL)No. 42759
- Qualified member, Institute of Translation & Interpreting (MITI)No. 8695
- ISO 17100:2015 qualified translatorCertified
- Diploma in Translation, IoLETMerit Technology · Distinction Law
- BA (Hons) Classical Archaeology, Istanbul UniversityFour-year course
- MA History and Politics (part-time), Birkbeck, University of LondonFirst year completed
Both memberships can be checked in the CIOL and ITI public directories.
What clients say
Have a document or project in mind?
Send it over and I’ll come back with a fixed price and a delivery date.