BRIEF BIOGRAPHY

In the mid-1960s, I transferred from the US Navy Reserve Security Group to the active US Air Force Security Service for the express purpose of becoming a linguist. I subsequently completed my Russian studies at Syracuse University.

Stationed in Trabzon, Turkey, I provided critical information to the National Security Agency (NSA) during the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, which resulted in a unit citation and a presidential letter of commendation. I spent my remaining time in the military working at the NSA headquarters on Fort George G. Meade, Maryland.

After being honorably discharged, I accepted the position of senior language analyst with Informatics, Inc., in Riverdale, Maryland, where I remained for six years under the auspices of a contract with the Air Force's Foreign Technology Division at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio.

Thereafter, I was hired as a senior language specialist by the Federal Research Division of the Library of Congress and held this position until 1979, when I became a full-time freelance translator.

Over the next dozen years, I completed ongoing translation assignments for numerous agencies, firms, and organizations in the nation's capital. Most notably during this period, I translated and analyzed the Korean Airline shoot-down tape for the Washington bureau of NBC News, in addition to which I was a founder and charter member of The Translators Guild (later The Translators and Interpreters Guild), the only translators' union in the United States.

In 1991, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) selected me from a field of thirty candidates for a one-month posting to Moscow, where I was the sole IMF translator on duty when Gorbachev surrendered power to Yeltsin. This was the first of half a dozen extended missions to various republics of the former Soviet Union that I would undertake on behalf the IMF, the World Bank, and other clients during the next two years.

In 1993, I assumed the management of EOP Translation Services, Inc., in Washington, DC, and held this position until deciding to return to the freelance arena in 1995.

I worked as a translator and lexicographer for MasterWord Services in Houston, Texas, during 2008-2009, but again found the freelance work was more to my liking.

I am the author of six Russian-English dictionaries, as well as more than eighty newsletter and newspaper articles on various aspects of translation work.

I presently reside in Crestview, Florida, with my wife, Sue, where I continue to prepare Russian-English translations for various clients on a full-time freelance basis.

Jim Shipp