Extensive expertise in IT, Marketing, Business English and Français des affaires

During the course of early 2006 I have translated an O'Reilly, Inc. programming/coding book - from English into Bulgarian - called "Learning Python" (700 standard pages approximately), ISBN 954-9341-14-3.

I have obtained a Master's degree in French Philology (Linguistics) from the University of Sofia.

I've specialised in Applied Linguistics, in the field of automated treatment of natural languages (automatic summarizer software applications for the Bulgarian Language).
My Masters specialisation was in Computational Linguistics, within a joint programme between the University of Sofia and the University of Paris - Sorbonne.

I have lived and studied in Paris, France, for a year.

I have obtained a Superior Diploma (Certificat Pratique & Diplôme Supérieur) in Business French (Français des affaires) from the Chamber of Trade & Industry in Paris, as certified by the President of the Chamber - dating from 1994 & 1995.
The 2-year extensive course comprised coverage of the Language and Style of Professional Communication, Terminology (over 8000 business language terms and expressions), and was aimed at building understanding of all major Economics domains, including Marketing, Management, Accounting, Foreign Trade, Banking & Finance - as well as a brief overview of French and European Jurisprudence.

I specialise in the field of IT & Marketing translations - software localisation (UI & documentation) - UI strings, FAQs (user support documents), automated emails, product overviews, etc.

I truly enjoy thinking in English and French - to me it is both a challenge and delight.

Tools of my trade:
"Dictionary of the Bulgarian Language", edited by the Institute for Bulgarian Language at the Bulgarian Academy of Science (the only officially recognised body in charge of editing rules and regulations concerning the Bulgarian Language) – I own (and consult on a regular basis) all 13 volumes published thus far (the first 12 volumes are currently out of print):
http://ibl.bas.bg/publications_bg2#%D0%A0%D0%91%D0%95

"Orthography and Punctuation of the Bulgarian Language", Prosveta Publishing house, 2011

"Contemporary Bulgarian Punctuation", by a renowned linguist and university lecturer (Russelina Nitsolova, professor in Bulgarian Philology for several decades at the University of Sofia). Due to its year of publication (1989 - for the 2nd edition), the book is not available for sale, albeit it can be consulted on-site at the Philology Library of the University of Sofia. (I own a copy of the latest edition of the manual.)

Based on Ms Nitsolova's treaty on punctuation, Bulgarian appears to be a mixed case between the French (to be seen in French, Italian, English, Serbian) and the German punctuation type (predominant in German, Russian). A side note – the dichotomy (classification) of French/German punctuation types appears to be a commonly adopted opposition in qualifying punctuation systems in many Indo-European languages.

In the French punctuation type the dominating principle is the phonetic separation (depending on pauses made within a sentence in spoken speech), while in the German it is the syntactic separation – and the commas as syntactic connectors play a slightly different role.

Historically, following the Bulgarian Renaissance (Възраждането), under the influence of Russian (starting from the late XIX century), Bulgarian punctuation has made a gradual transition from the French (phonetic separation) to the German punctuation type (syntactic separation). This evolution has not been done in a consecutive (uniform) manner, even during major orthography reforms, and was also carried out over a long period of time – the end result today is a mixed punctuation type, with a very large set of rules, and orders of precedence between certain rules which are occasionally contradicting each other (short summary of the introductory historical overview at the beginning of Ms Nitsolova's manual on punctuation).
Samples of different cases of usage of comma, and other punctuation signs, can be seen in literary works of Bg authors from different periods (again, it's been well illustrated by Ms Nitsolova).

The above could explain why in many cases English (mostly phonetic) and Bulgarian (mostly syntactic, but overall mixed) punctuation rules differ – and automatically copying commas,
e.g. after "So,/Така че," (at the beginning of the sentence) or before ", and/и" is often times incorrect (amounts to a punctuation error) in Bulgarian.