Whittling Words

Scolpire parole

Owner Karen Elaine Whittle

Italian > English Translations

Language Editing Services


I wanted to find a name for my business that reflected the work of precision, patience and fantasy required by the profession of translator:
as luck would have it, my surname fitted the bill perfectly!

to whittle:

To carve or shape something little by little into a finished product


Academia

Translation and language editing of academic texts in the arts and humanities.

Art

Contemporary art press releases, critical texts and exhibition catalogues.

Tourism

Travel articles, tourist guides, leaflets, recipes, local culture and history.

Praise

Thanks again for your extreme competence, meticulousness and attention, not only in the editing, but also your research and feedback, which is crucial for us to improve our knowledge and use of English.
Stefano degli Uberti
CNR-IRPPS (Italian National Research Council Institute for Research on Population and Social Studies)
It’s not easy to find someone who manages to understand the things we write and translate them in a fitting way.
All in all, in many years of experience, you’re perhaps the first person who we’ve really been satisfied with.
Camilla Perrone
Dept. of Architecture, University of Florence
I hereby certify Ms Whittle’s precise, in-depth and meticulous professionalism, as well as her refined capacity to understand texts of a pedagogical, sociological and philosophical nature, and her ability to render them in fluent translations that can be used both by academics and the wider public.
Vanna Boffo
Dept. of Education, Languages, Interculture, Literature and Psychology, University of Florence

Tales of Translation

Visibility for Translators

Visibility for Translators

Translating is an art. Translators are authors in their own right. And the author/artist deserves recognition. While this is unfortunately still not always the case, progress is definitely being made.
I recently translated the book by Nicola Emery, For Nonconformism: Max Horkheimer and Friedrich Pollock. The Other Frankfurt School, charting the human and scientific relationship that bound the two scholars throughout their lives…

Encounters in Philosophy

Encounters in Philosophy

I worked with Elena Pulcini for twenty years before Covid took her away in 2021. Over this time we built a close relationship of understanding, mutual trust and esteem. Our work together culminated in the contemporary translation of two of her books, Care of the World (La cura del mondo) and The Individual without Passions (L’individuo senza passioni)…

Between Theory and Practice

Between Theory and Practice

After gaining my CELTA certificate in 1997, I began my career as a teacher of English as a foreign language. I worked with toddlers, children, teenagers and adults, who were learning English for fun, work or school. I prepared my pupils for everything from end-of-year performances to exams, taught them grammar rules, encouraged them to express themselves and corrected their mistakes…

Translating Images into Words

Translating Images into Words

I’ve worked for Galleria il Ponte in Florence, owned by gallerist Andrea Alibrandi, for almost 20 years. During this time, I’ve got to know various contemporary artists – Mauro Staccioli, Jan Fabre, Renato Ranaldi, Carol Rama, to name just a few – from the inside, you could say. Because just looking at the images could leave you a bit perplexed; you have to know the thinking behind them…

Travels in Space and Time

Travels in Space and Time

During the pandemic, I started to work with Giovanni Tarantino, professor of medieval history at the university of Florence, who brought me to discover the COST Action project PiMO – People in Motion. Though it might have been a slightly frustrating name in that time of lockdown, it whisked me off to other spaces and times in my mind…

Studying Today’s Societies

Studying Today’s Societies

We live in a changing world. We’re not fixed to the spot (if indeed we ever were, except during Covid), people move around, their lives entwine. It’s a subject studied by the sociologists at CNR-IRPPS, the National Research Council Institute for Research on the Population and Social Policies, and the research teams in the social and political science departments at the universities of Florence and Milan whom it’s been my pleasure to work with for several years…