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Geoffrey Kingscott is a UK-based writer and translator involved in a number of activities, sometimes as an individual, and sometimes, through the company Geoffrey Kingscott Consultants Limited, in cooperation with others.
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Geoffrey Kingscott Consultants Limited
Telephone (from outside UK): 0044 115 946 8653
Telephone (from inside UK) : 0115 946 8653
Email: geoffrey.kingscott@btopenworld.com
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Educated at Long Eaton Grammar School and University College London, where he took a BA (Honours) degree in French in 1958.
He and his wife Judy have been married since 1962. They have three grown-up children (Roger, Sally and Laurence) and five grandchildren (Harry, Emma Sophie, Jack and Rebecca).
Roger, Sally and Laurence Kingscott pictured at last year’s annual family Bonfire Night party, always held in the large garden at Laurence’s house.
Grandchildren Rebecca, Emma, Sophie, Jack and Harry at Scarborough.
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Geoffrey Kingscott has had a distinguished career in the related fields of technical translation and multilingual documentation.
Career
From 1983-2001 Geoffrey Kingscott was managing director of Praetorius Limited, which had offices in Nottingham and Leeds in the UK, and a fully-owned US subsidiary company, Praetorius North America Inc., with its office in Chicago. Praetorius Limited was sold to Logos SpA in 2001.
A Fellow of the Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI), Geoffrey Kingscott chaired its inaugural meeting in April 1986, and its first conference in 1987. He was chairman of its East Midlands Group 1989-1995, and chairman of its Professional Standards Committee 2004-2007.
He has been an external examiner for the master's and postgraduate diploma translating course at Bradford University 1991-1995 and 1998-1999, and for the technical writing and terminography module at Surrey University 2003-2006.
Geoffrey Kingscott has spoken at conferences on translation processes and techniques on many occasions and in many countries. He has also contributed articles to a number of publications. For a complete listing of these write to him at geoffrey.kingscott@btopenworld.com
Controlled language
Controlled language is technical writing, for instruction manuals and the like, written according to strict rules and with a deliberately limited vocabulary. The aim is to eliminate ambiguity, by ensuring that the message is simple and direct. It has been consistently shown that source documents written in controlled language are easier to process when using memory-based translation tools, or machine translation. For further information on controlled language see www.smartny.com or contact Geoffrey Kingscott Consultants Limited, geoffrey.kingscott@btopenworld.com.
Translation
Geoffrey Kingscott has wide-ranging experience in the field of technical translation. He is available as a consultant if advice is required on any field of translation except literary translation. He also continues to do freelance translation work, translating into English from French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, specialising in mechanical engineering texts, especially those involving automotive engineering. Contact geoffrey.kingscott@btopenworld.com for further information.
Please note that Geoffrey Kingscott Consultants Limited do not act as a company or agency for the placing or processing of translation work. Anyone wanting such services should approach the international translation company Logos SpA, www.logos.net.
Translation quality evaluation
Translation quality evaluation has been a particular area of study for Geoffrey Kingscott for some years, and he has given a number of conference papers on this topic. In 2004 a major article for the web-based magazine Globalization
Insider provided a comprehensive overview of the whole field of translation quality evaluation, ranging from Latin authors to software systems, and from the academic approach in university translation studies to metrics-based processes such as that used in the modern automotive industry. He has recently contributed an article: An
approach to translation quality assessment to the Language International website www.language-international.net. Geoffrey Kingscott Consultants Limited will be glad to advise on the establishment of systems for the evaluation of translations.
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Trent Station
Geoffrey
Kingscott’s book, Last Train from Trent Station, was
published in April 2007.
Cover of Geoffrey Kingscott's book on Trent Station.
Trent Station was
an unusual railway station. It was built solely as an interchange,
on what would now be called a greenfield site, in the south-east corner
of Derbyshire. As it did not serve any local population it was named
after a river, rather than after a town or village. It opened in 1862,
and was described in one Midland Railway publication as "the junction
for everywhere". It changed little in its 106 years of existence, and
even to its last day, December 31, 1967, was lit by gas lamps, never
having had electricity. It was built in the Midland Gothic style, and
poet laureate John Betjeman was one of those who deplored its demolition.
Over each platform there was an impressive array of 27 glass canopy
sections.
So much interest has been generated by this book that
a separate website dedicated to Trent Station has been created, www.trentstation.co.uk.
Copies
of Last Train from Trent Station can be ordered from
Geoffrey Kingscott Consultants Limited, 23 Shaftesbury Avenue, Long
Eaton, Nottingham, NG10 3FG, price £12 each plus £1.20 pence postage and packing.
Copies are also available from a number of railway specialist bookshops - see www.trentstation.co.uk for
a list of these.
The Lost Railways series
Countryside
Books of Newbury in Berkshire (www.countrysidebooks.co.uk)
publish a successful series on the lost railways of various counties
in England. Geoffrey Kingscott has written three of these books, Lost
Railways of Nottinghamshire and Lost Railways of Leicestershire
and Rutland, and Lost Railways of Derbyshire, and he is
now working on Lost
Railways of Northamptonshire. He is assisted in this work by his
brother-in-law Rodger Smith.
The cover of Lost Railways of Nottinghamshire.
This book, published in 2005, has chapters on the Great Central Railway in Nottinghamshire (‘Pride of the Shires’), the Midland Railway’s Nottingham to London line via Melton Mowbray (‘The Severed Head’), the Great Northern Railway stations in Nottingham (‘Relics of the GNR’), the Derbyshire and Staffordshire Extension line (‘Where Housing Estates now Stand’), Colwick Yard (‘A Fallen Colossus’), the Nottingham Suburban Railway (‘Built for Early Commuters’), the Midland Railway, Great Central and Great Northern competing railways in the Leen Valley (“Parallel Lines, Rival Stations”), the Southwell to Mansfield line (‘The Southwell Paddy’), on lines in north and west Nottinghamshire, and on lines north and east of Nottingham. All this adds up to a comprehensive survey of every railway line in Nottinghamshire which no longer carries passengers, and in many cases no longer exists.
The Bennerley viaduct, featured in the book, is one of Nottinghamshire’s most monumental railway relics. Photograph by Judy Wheldon.
b) Lost Railways of Leicestershire and Rutland.
This book, published in 2006, has chapters on the Leicester & Swannington Railway (‘First in the Midlands’), on the Ashby-Derby line, the Burton & Ashby Light Railway and the Leicester-Burton line (“Lines round Ashby-de-la-Zouch”), on the Nuneaton to Ashby line and the Battlefield line heritage railway, on the Charnwood Forest Railway (‘The Bluebell Line’), on major route from Bottesford to Hallaton through Melton Mowbray with a branch to Leicester (‘The Joint Line’), on lines into and out of Rutland, on lines out of Market Harborough (‘Lost Lines to Rugby and Northampton’), and on the Great Central Railway in Leicestershire and on the heritage line between Loughborough and Leicester North.
Shackerstone Station today, headquarters of the Battlefield Line, the heritage railway which today runs trains on a section of the old Nuneaton to Ashby line. Photograph by Judy Wheldon.
Passenger train on the restored section of the Great Central Railway pulling into Rothley Station. Photograph by Judy Wheldon.
c) Lost Railways of Derbyshire.
This book, to be published in October 2007, has chapters on early plateways and tramways, the Cromford & High Peak Railway, the Ambergate to Buxton main line, the Ashbourne to Buxton line, the Wirksworth branch, the Great Central Railway in Derbyshire, the Ashover Light Railway, the Friargate line, the lines in the north of the county, and those in lowland Derbyshire.
The
High Peak Trail now runs along the route of the old Cromford & High
Peak Railway. Photograph by Judy Wheldon.
An
express emerging from Spinkhill Tunnel. Picture by courtesy
of David Chaplin.
The portal to Spinkill Tunnel is still there, photographed by Rodger Smith in 2006.
Rodger Smith's photograph of Rood Ashton Hall on the Erewash Valley line in 2006.
d)
Lost Railways of Northamptonshire.
Geoffrey
Kingscott has now started work on his fourth Lost
Railways book, this time on the Lost Railways of
Northamptonshire. The book will cover the Great Central
Railway, the LNWR lines between Rugby and Stamford,
Weedon and Leamington, Banbury and Bletchley, Market
Harborough and Northampton, and Northampton and Peterborough,
the Stratford & Midland Junction lines through Towcester,
and the Midland Railway lines between Manton Junction
and Kettering, Kettering and Huntingdon, and Northampton
and Bedford. This book is scheduled for publication
in October 2008.
Catesby
Viaduct, part of what used to be the Great Central Railway,
is still a major feature of the Northamptonshire landscape.
Photograph by Laurence Kingscott.
Wansford Station on the Nene Valley Railway, a heritage line created on part of the old Northampton to Peterborough route. Photograph by Judy Wheldon.
On
November 14, 2007, Geoffrey and Judy Kingscott travelled
to Brussels on the first commercial Eurostar service
out of the refurbished St Pancras Station.
Boarding
the train.
The
train pulls out of St Pancras. Photograph by Judy Wheldon.
Passengers
were welcomed at Brussels Midi station by a lively jazz
band.
Photograph by Judy Wheldon.
John Petley Book
Associate John Petley has produced a book, Southern,
Loco-Hauled Finale, 1980-2005, ISBN 0 9950918 0 2, commemorating,
in a series of superb photographs, the last years of
the old Southern Region of British Rail.
Published by,
High Weald Transport Publishing, it consists of 128 pages
in hardback A4 format, and contains 244 black and white
illustrations. Copies can be obtained from the John Petley,
Appletree Cottage, Stunts Green, Herstmonceux, E. Sussex,
BN27 4PR for £21.95 plus £2 postage.. Cheques should
be made payable to J. Petley.
Ever since the Brighton
Main Line was electrified in 1933, the Southern Railway
and its successors have been in the forefront of replacing
locomotive-hauled passenger trains with multiple units.
However, it has taken until 2005 for timetabled loco-hauled
trains to disappear completely.
This book, consisting
entirely of pictures from the author's collection, is
a commemoration of the final 25 years of these services.
Some of the workings covered, such as Waterloo-Exeter
and Victoria-Gatwick, will be familiar to many. However,
some rarely-photographed trains are depicted as well, such as the short-lived
Newhaven-Manchester train, withdrawn in 1987 after only a year, and the cross-country
services to Portsmouth via Guildford. A few memories will also be stirred by
pictures of long-forgotten trains such as the "Crompton"-hauled 17.20 London
Bridge-Uckfield and the overnight newspaper trains, complete with solitary Mk
I coach. Overall, in fact, the author has deliberately chosen not to concentrate
excessively on the better-known workings, for these (especially the West of England
Line) have been adequately covered elsewhere.
Although the book primarily covers
scheduled loco-hauled trains, a few specials are also illustrated, including
the late-lamented "Merrymakers" and SAGA trains,
along with a few pictures of the VSOE Pullmans and some enthusiasts' specials.
Although
Black & White may seem a bit "Retro" these days, it is quite surprising
how good even quite contemporary liveries, such as Virgin Red and Wessex Pink
can look in monochrome. The book will certainly bring back a lot of fond memories for many Modern Traction fans in the South of England.
The cuttings and tunnels of the Quarry line make it a very difficult stretch
for photography. One of the few possible locations is Hooley, south of Coulsdon,
where 73211, In Inter City Swallow livery, is seen on June 28, 1993, with the
3.30 p.m. from Victoria.
If Britain has been slow off the mark with the Plandampf, Virgin Trains can probably take credit for the first Plandiesel. We bid farewell to the unsuccessful attempt to put Kent on to the Cross Country map with another look at D9000 Royal Scots Grey on the 6.58 a.m. Birmingham-Ramsgate, this time at Westgate-on-Sea on August 21, 1999.
Talks
Geoffrey Kingscott gives talks on any
of the above topics to local societies.
He is himself
a member of the Railway & Canal Historical Society, the
Midland Railway Society, the Ecclesbourne Valley Railway
Association, Friends of the Great Central Railway, and
the Peak Railway Association.
The
English Shires
Geoffrey Kingscott is also currently preparing a book called The English Shires, which examines how our county system came into being, why it has lasted 1,000 years and still has a lot of life left in it, and continues to give people a sense of local identity. But it is now threatened by bureaucrats and politicians who cannot stop constant tinkering with boundaries, by the proliferation of quangos and new administrative authorities, each with their own 'area' offices, and by the regionalisation promoted by the European Union.
Geoffrey Kingscott on the boundary between Rutland and Northamptonshire. Rutland is England's smallest county, but its residents have put up a doughty fight in recent years to prevent it being legislated out of existence.