Hey, I’m Małgorzata (or Gosia), and I’m your English-to-Polish marketing translator and transcreator.
I was between my fourth and fifth year of English philology when I wrote to two of my lecturers asking if they knew of any translation work for the summer. One of them happened to run the Polish department at a translation agency in my hometown. He told me to come in that week.
I did. And I stayed for nine years, finishing my degree with distinction in the meantime.
There was no career detour after that. I’ve been working with language ever since.
Over the years, I’ve translated more types of content than I can list here: certified documents, government communications, contracts, technical manuals, pharmaceutical texts, internal policies and plenty in between. These days, I focus mainly on marketing, brand and ecommerce content that must sound good in Polish, but having handled nearly everything else first means a complicated brief doesn’t throw me off.
After nearly two decades, I still enjoy the work.
Some numbers.
19+
years in translation
9
years in-house
before going independent
3
literary translation competitions –
did well in all of them
1
book translated into Polish: How to Write a Marketing Plan by John Westwood
A few things you didn’t ask about.
I have two kids, Franka (12) and Tadzio (4).
I’ve been logging every book I’ve read since May 1996. Still going.
I cycled 200 km in my free afternoons throughout May 2021. Haven’t beaten that record yet.
I work standing up – my spine made that decision for me.
I translated the Polish exhibition texts for World Press Photo 2019, including over 140 photo captions.
I’m an avid audiobook listener.
Where does manoros come from?
From a dream – literally. Years ago, my husband dreamt he was a teacher. He drew a rhinoceros on the blackboard and asked the class what it was. A small blonde girl – curiously similar to our daughter – raised her hand and said: “It’s a manoros.”
Why manoros? “Because it has a nose and it grows” (“bo ma nos i mu rośnie” in Polish). Dream logic, what can you do.
I wasn’t yet his wife, we didn’t yet have kids and I didn’t yet have a business. But the name was already chosen.
(Pronounced mah-no-ros, by the way.)
