# Jetzt Übersetzt

> Professional specialist translation, German ↔ English, operated by Alexander Kirsch-Clayton—bilingual native speaker of both languages (German father, American mother; both languages at educated academic register / *bildungssprachliches Niveau*). Based in Berlin (DE) and Florida (US), full-time translator since 2008, over 7,000 completed jobs for clients in the DAX, TecDAX, and MDAX space (under NDA). Specialties: annual and sustainability reports, automotive, mechanical engineering, defense, consumer goods, marketing.

## What I do

- **Specialist translation German ↔ English**—99% DE→EN, occasional EN→DE. Priced per 55-character standard line.
- **English editing** of texts written by another translator, by the client, or by a machine. Hourly rate for scoped work; line rate for full MTPE.
- **German proofreading** for spelling, punctuation, and typography on texts written in German.
- **MTPE (Machine Translation Post-Editing)**—full post-editing of machine-drafted text, at 60% of the standard line rate. Suitable for text types where MT produces a solid draft.
- **CAT-tool projects with match-level pricing**—Trados- and Across-compatible, with the standard German-market match-level scale.

## Pricing

- Translation: €0.85 per 55-character standard line (no match)
- Non-translation work (editing, proofreading, consultation): €50 per hour, flat
- MTPE: €0.51 per line (60% of the standard rate)
- CAT-tool match scale (per line):
  - Context TM: €0.00
  - Repetitions / 100%: €0.17
  - 95–99% / 85–94% / 75–84%: €0.51
  - 50–74%: €0.68
  - No match: €0.85
- Rush surcharge: +30% for delivery within 24 h, +50% for same-day or weekend/holiday.
- Volume discount: negotiable from ~5,000 lines upward.
- Minimum charge for small new jobs: €20 (≈ 24 standard lines at the no-match rate).

All prices exclude VAT. EU B2B reverse-charge (§ 13b UStG) applies.

## Specialties

- **Annual reports (Geschäftsberichte)** and **sustainability reports (Nachhaltigkeitsberichte)**—IFRS, HGB, US-GAAP, GRI, CSRD, ESRS, SASB, TCFD terminology. Multi-week projects spanning a parent company and all its subsidiaries are routine.
- **Automotive, mechanical engineering, defense**—technical documentation, product descriptions, press releases, internal training materials.
- **Consumer goods, marketing, transcreation**—brand-adjacent copy that needs to read idiomatically in the target market, not just literally.

End clients include DAX-, TecDAX-, and MDAX-listed companies. Specific names are under NDA and cannot be published.

## Tools

Daily working toolkit: Trados Studio, Across Translator Edition, Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, Excel. Terminology management via CAT-tool termbases.

## Positioning on machine translation

I am AI-open, not AI-hostile. I have used machine translation in my workflow since 2019 and pass the efficiency savings on to clients (MTPE rate). But nothing leaves my desk without my final human pass: idiomatic phrasing, no Denglish, no German sentence structures bleeding into English. Most readers can smell a translation a mile away. My texts do not.

## Confidentiality

Source and target documents stay on my own infrastructure. I do not route translation material through cloud LLM services that could train on or retain content. I sign any NDA you place in front of me.

## Credentials

- **Language proficiency:** native speaker of **both** German and English—bilingual upbringing (German father, American mother), both languages at educated / academic register (*bildungssprachliches Niveau*), both written at a level well above average native-speaker output. This is unusual: most translators are native in only one of their working languages.
- Full-time translator since **2008** (the translator’s career—Alexander Kirsch-Clayton personally).
- Legal entity **Jetzt Übersetzt LLC** was founded on **2022-10-25** in Minnesota (file #1344607700022). The LLC is the billing entity; the translation work itself predates it by 14 years.
- Over 7,000 individual jobs completed.
- Proficient with SDL Trados Studio, Across Translator Edition, and comparable CAT tools.
- No sworn-translator / BDÜ / ISO 17100 certification—never needed them; work comes through existing client relationships. I do not perform certified / notarized translations.
- **CV (PDF):** https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/cv.pdf (English) · https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/lebenslauf.pdf (German). Full work history, education, tooling.
- **ProZ profile:** https://www.proz.com/profile/138291 (active since 2008).

## How to engage

- **Email:** alexander@jetzt-uebersetzt.de
- **Phone:** +49 30 89734908 (landline DE), +49 157 9259 6395 (mobile DE), +1 786 828 8874 (mobile US)
- **Availability:** daily, including weekends, 8–19 local time wherever I am (Germany / US / occasional travel—real-time location shown on the homepage and contact page).
- **Response:** typically under 4 hours, often faster.
- **Quote turnaround:** a firm line count, flat-rate price, and delivery date within 24 hours at maximum—usually much faster.

Send the source files (ideally in their original format—.docx, .idml, Trados package, etc.) and I reply with the quote.

## Data security (translation workflow)

For confidential client work—which covers the vast majority of assignments—the operational setup is deliberately stricter than a typical freelance translator’s:

- **Always-on German IP.** All client work is routed through a dedicated NordVPN exit in Germany. I don’t work without this connection, regardless of which country I’m physically in. This ensures the same network egress regardless of whether I’m in Berlin, Florida, or Southeast Asia.
- **German-jurisdiction data residency.** All client files (source documents, reference material, translation memories, termbases, deliverables) are stored exclusively on German servers (Hetzner, Falkenstein). No US cloud, no third countries, no "convenience" sync tools that land data outside the EU.
- **Contract-tier AI only.** AI assistance is used selectively: DeepL Pro for machine translation, and Claude Max for research, drafting, and editorial checks—always under the paid-tier contracts, which carry explicit no-storage and no-training-on-inputs terms (DeepL Pro: data discarded after processing; Anthropic Claude Max: training on user conversations disabled by default). Free/consumer AI tools (ChatGPT free tier, DeepL web, Google Translate, Bing Chat, etc.) never receive client content under any circumstance. Where an LSP has its own authorized MTPE workflow (e.g., their own DeepL API key or Across MT connector), that flows through their systems, not mine. CAT work happens locally (Trados Studio, Across Translator Edition).
- **Encrypted local storage.** Working files on encrypted volumes. NDAs honored without gaps across the rotating-residence digital-nomad workflow.

This posture is aimed at LSPs and direct clients handling pre-publication reporting material (annual reports, sustainability reports, defense documentation) where any form of data leakage—including inadvertent transmission to public AI services—is a material risk.

## Infrastructure (site operation)

- **Hosting:** Hetzner Online GmbH (Falkenstein, Germany)—GDPR-compliant, data stays in the EU.
- **CDN:** Cloudflare (with standard DPF + SCCs).
- **Reach measurement:** GoatCounter—self-hosted on the Hetzner server in Falkenstein, cookieless, no IP logging, no third-party transfer. Details in the privacy policy.
- **No third-party trackers beyond the above.** No Google Analytics, Facebook Pixel, Matomo, or any tag manager.
- **Geo personalization** on the homepage uses a local offline MaxMind GeoLite2 database; the visitor’s IP is not transmitted to MaxMind or any third party.
- **Default theme** (light/dark) is picked by the visitor’s local time of day when no explicit preference is saved.

## Important pages

- [Start / Home (DE)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/): homepage — positioning, about, live data-security posture
- [Home (EN)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/en/): English homepage
- [Leistungen / Services & pricing (DE)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/leistungen): full service catalog, per-line rates, FAQ
- [Services & pricing (EN)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/en/services): English services + FAQ
- [Blog (DE)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/blog): field notes on DE↔EN specialist translation
- [Blog (EN)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/en/blog): English blog
- [Kontakt / Contact (DE)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/kontakt): request a firm quote
- [Contact (EN)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/en/contact): English contact form
- [Impressum / Legal Notice](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/impressum): legal entity information
- [Datenschutz / Privacy](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/datenschutz): privacy policy
- [CV (PDF, English)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/cv.pdf): full work history, education, tooling
- [Lebenslauf (PDF, Deutsch)](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de/lebenslauf.pdf): CV in German
- [ProZ profile](https://www.proz.com/profile/138291): translator-platform profile, active since 2008

## Languages

Primary language: German (de-DE). Full English translation available at /en/.

## Contact

- Website: [jetzt-uebersetzt.de](https://jetzt-uebersetzt.de)
- Email: alexander@jetzt-uebersetzt.de
- Last updated: 2026-06-21