Our name is our motto — modern communication technologies allow us to work together as though we were sitting in the same office, even though we are spread across several countries. While Petite Planète was founded in 2002 in Freiburg, Germany, the benefits of taking the best translators from across the globe soon became clear. Petite Planète is a team of translators who know that they can rely on each other in difficult projects — both professsionally and personally.

Craig Morris, M.A., of New Orleans founded Petite Planète in 2002. He handles translations from English, German, and French in the fields of IT, energy, and finances. After finishing his studies in the US, France, and Germany, he was a lecturer at universities in the US and Germany. Most recently, he taught translation courses as a lecturer at the University of Freiburg from 1993-1998. His writings about environmental / energy issues and energy policies in the US and EU have been published in Worldwatch Magazine, Heise Verlag, neue energie / New Energy, Refocus, SolarServer, Solar Today, Grist.org, Alternet.org, the San Francisco Chronicle, Development + Cooperation, pv magazine and Photon. In a former life, he was on tour as a jazz singer from Switzerland to Denmark, Russia, and Japan. In his free time, he likes to cycle; he has completed the Camino de Santiago by bike twice from France – and he took his office with him (laptop with SIM card). In the photo on the left, he is holding up his recumbent trike on the square in front of the cathedral in Santiago – after 1700 kilometers. And if you think he has an interesting life…

Eva Wolfram, who hails from Bayrischzell in Upper Bavaria, received her degree in translating from the College of Foreign Languages in Munich back in 1984. She initially worked as a technical writer at Foton GmbH, a manufacturer of precision equipment for chip production based in Munich, but switched two years later to Markt & Technik Verlag, where she got her feet wet in publishing. In 1988, she joined “Wolfram’s Fachverlag,” directing the German editions of such IT heavyweights as Computer Networks by Andrew Tanenbaum and Managing Programming People by Philip W. Metzger from her office in a small Spanish village. In 1995, she moved to the southern coast of England, where she has since been translating mainly in the sector of IT on the Isle of Wight. Among others publications, she is the translator of HTML/XHTML: The Definitive Guide, Webmaster in a Nutshell, Windows Annoyances, and Mac OS X: The Missing Manual for O’Reilly. For Petite Planète, she handles translations from German and English in the fields of IT and PV. She is the mother of two children, with whom she once spent a full year traveling through New Zealand in a camper. And she makes labyrinths (see picture to the left). And if that’s not interesting enough for you…

Tim Hanes, (M.A.) of Berkeley, California studied natural sciences and the history of Western thought at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, where he received his bachelor’s degree in 1992. In 1991, he published his first reports at the Washington Post before moving to the State of Washington as a journalist. In 1994, he joined the U.S. Army and received his degree as a translator and interpreter for Arabic from the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, California; he later served in the former Yugoslavia. In 1998, he left the military to study the Palestinian dialect for a year at Birzeit University on the Palestinian West Bank. In 1999, he moved to Germany and again joined the U.S. Army as an officer, serving in Afghanistan. His interest in renewables began there when he saw how diesel generators were used to provide electricity to the troops suffering in the sweltering heat of Afghanistan. In the image to the left, he is drinking tea (in uniform) with a group of Afghans on the edge of a field of poppies. In 2007, he received his master’s degree in political science from the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. He is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Political Science at the European Campus of the University of Maryland in Heidelberg. For Petite Planète, he handles translations from German, English, and Arabic in the fields of IT and energy. And as if that weren’t interesting enough…

Henry White is a Scotsman based in Portugal. He left school at 15 – shortly after World War II – with a good grounding in French and German, worked as a trainee theatre manager and cinema projectionist, then served as an NCO in the army (Black Watch, Intelligence Corps) for around 17 years (image of badge and tartan on the left), during which he picked up some useful skills — a linguist award in Russian, touch-typing, driving, etc. He then trained as a seagoing radio officer and worked on a couple of North Sea platforms and a pipelaying barge, then on a Greek ship trading between Europe and West Africa, a Liberian (German-owned) vessel that went right round the world (“beating the sun,” the German captain declared two Sundays in a row), and a British channel ferry. He then went ashore and took a job in a printing firm. From there, he went into translating – “more congenial than anything else I’d done.” He had picked up a lot of Spanish while at sea, so he has been translating into English from French, German, Russian and Spanish full-time for nearly 21 years now. Henry joined Petite Planète in 2007 and has become a real workhorse for the team. In his spare time, he gardens in his Portuguese village: “It gets me away from the desk and gives me the exercise I need, and still leaves me time to earn my keep with translations.” And of course, he plays bagpipe.

So how do you top a life of experience like Henry’s? There’s only one way: youth.

BethAnne Freund hails from the village of Fall Creek, Wisconsin, where she was raised on a hobby farm. In her junior year of high school, she spend a year in Graz, Austria. In the picture to the left, she is posing with a “Krampus” on Halloween at Christmas in Austria. In 2008, she got her BA in German and anthropology, with a minor in global cultures and European studies, from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, including two short study-abroad programs, one to Cyprus and one to Croatia; she spent her junior year in Freiburg. Since 2008, she has been translating for Petite Planète, including this coffee table book about Freiburg. In her free time, she takes part in Freiburg’s English theater group the ManiACTs and the Portuguese group Os Quasilusos. At Petite Planète, she is our crack learner – and expert on quality assurance. And you know all of her other experienced colleagues at Petite Planète would gladly give up their experience to be her age once again…