User:Bill Thayer

For over twenty years I was by profession a French/English translator and simultaneous interpreter (both directions), specializing in machine tools, construction and other engineering, and the options and futures markets. I'm now retired and have returned to my first love, essentially history and old stones; I've created a very large site with three main panels: Roman antiquity, American history, and central Italy. Much of the first two panels is a work of transcription, as faithful as possible; most of the third panel is original, consisting of short art-historical essays on places in Italy, often very small and somewhat remote, since I've walked about 2500 km of the country and know parts of it, in particular Umbria, very well.

I am a native speaker of French and English, and speak and write fair Italian; although I learned to read and write in Spanish, my Spanish is now only of middle proficiency. I read a number of other languages.