Employee’s Story – July

Every month, we get to know a bit more about one of our linguists. This month, for a change, we introduce you to one of the TLS team, Peta Moore.

Tell us about the work you do for TLS.  

At TLS I am part of the Ops team who manage the bookings for both spoken languages and non-spoken languages. We also deal with queries over the phone and via email from customers and interpreters. I oversee a lot of the queries and investigate the more complex questions to help maintain great customer service.

What has been your biggest challenge? 

My biggest challenge throughout my time at TLS was during COVID: facing the unknown, going through lockdown, battling my own health anxieties whilst making sure service users still had their appointments with their interpreters. It was definitely an eye opener and made me appreciate everything in my personal life and my professional life so much more.

Can you tell us about a time your work has made a difference to someone’s life?

I see all booking types day in and day out with this job, however the bookings that pull at my humanity the most are the appointments where bad news is being broken. I have gone through that process with my mum when she was battling cancer. Having that appointment in a language you are not too familiar with can be daunting, so knowing that I have helped someone get that devastating information in a language they feel most comfortable in warms my heart.

Tell us something interesting about you.

After learning French and Spanish at school, I did my BSL level 1 through TLS just before COVID. During lockdown I tried my hand at Polish but it didn’t stick. During a difficult time with my mental health I needed an outlet to distract my brain. I’d recently discovered a Finnish rapper Käärijä whose lyrics were all in Finnish. I loved the music but wanted to understand the lyrics, so I started to learn Finnish and fell in love with it. I researched Finnish culture and travelled to Finland last year and ventured round Helsinki. Since then I have also picked Dutch back up (I spoke it vaguely as a child) and this year I threw Korean into the mix.

My band are playing in Holland later this year and I hope to visit South Korea in the next year or two! Three very different languages – but I love every second of learning them!