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Stuart Dowell English Studio

natural, native English for culture & business

Your native English language partner for: Polish to English translation; editing & proofreading; AI and MT post-editing; copywriting; content writing; language consulting; journalism.

I am a qualified (DipTrans) Polish to English translator, editor and journalist with over 20 years of experience.

My specialised areas: culture, academia, marketing & communications

Contact me at stuart@stuartdowell.pl

Why work with me

In the cultural sector, communication in a way that feels natural and authentic to an English-speaking audience is key. 

Whether you need translations from Polish, or your English content requires fine-tuning, having a native British English linguist on your side ensures that your message hits the mark. "

With the increasing use of AI and machine translation, it's easy for subtle nuances to get lost, which is why professional editing and proofreading are essential. 

As a qualified translator with over 20 years of experience, I bring a deep understanding of language and culture, helping you engage your audience with clarity and confidence, ensuring your message stands out in the right way.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Culture

In the cultural sector, clear and authentic communication is essential to sharing stories, knowledge, and experiences across borders. Museums, cultural institutions and businesses rely on precise, culturally-sensitive translations and expertly crafted English content to engage global audiences. 

My services ensure that your message is not just accurately translated from Polish to English but also resonates with the nuances of British culture and language. 

Whether it’s translating exhibition materials, academic content, or public-facing communications, I help institutions and companies connect with international audiences through clear, natural, and engaging English, ensuring your cultural and educational impact reaches far and wide.

Recent culture & history articles

I am also a journalist :-) Explore some of my culture and history journalism in the international and Polish press

Notes From Poland •

The woman who has lived her whole life in Auschwitz

By Stuart Dowell
For Anna Odi, home is a place most would consider unimaginable. She has lived her entire life within the grounds of Auschwitz, the former German-Nazi concentration camp, surrounded by its dark history, in a former SS administration building that now forms part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum.
At 68, Anna refers to herself as “the last prisoner of Auschwitz”, not because she endured its horrors firsthand, but because her life has been shaped, even dictated, by the c...
Mail Online •

Did the son of the vanquished King Harold flee to POLAND?

By STUART DOWELL Published: 07:24, 25 October 2024 | Updated: 08:23, 25 October 2024 A mysterious grave discovered in a Polish castle nearly 60 years ago contained the remains of the lost son of England's vanquished King Harold, a historian has claimed.The grave, uncovered in 1966 in a castle in a small town south of Warsaw, has long been linked to a 'Count Magnus', who was thought to be a senior member of the Polish court in the 12th century.But recent research suggests he may in fact b...
Notes From Poland •

New museum tells the story of Poland's oldest chocolate company

By Stuart Dowell
The opening of the Wedel Chocolate Factory Museum in Warsaw – housed in a building shaped like a colossal chocolate bar – promises to sweeten the city’s cultural landscape and take visitors on a sensory tour of Poland’s oldest chocolate company.
This 200 million zloty (€47.5 million) investment, the biggest in the more than 170-year history of the company, allows visitors to taste and smell an array of confectionery, as well as see how popular Wedel products, such as Ptasie Mlec...
Notes From Poland •

Warsaw's "Robinson Crusoes" who survived in the rubble after the uprising

By Stuart Dowell
Today marks 80 years since the start of the Warsaw Uprising, the largest single resistance operation of World War Two. After 63 days, and the loss of up to 200,000 lives, the Polish forces finally succumbed to brutal repression by the German occupiers.
The Germans then expelled the hundreds of thousands of civilians remaining in Warsaw before systematically destroying the city. However, groups of survivors decided to remain among the ruins. They became known as Warsaw’s “Robinso...
The Jewish Chronicle •

Small town life: the shtetl through the eyes of an artist

When Mayer Kirshenblatt was a boy in Opatów in the 1920s his mother would send him to buy a single herring for the family dinner, which the fishmonger would wrap in just a narrow strip of newspaper, a full sheet being too valuable. On the way home, Mayer would lick the salty brine, not wasting a drop.
At home, his mother would remove the bag of semen from the fish and scoop it out adding chopped onions, vinegar, and sugar to make a tangy dipping sauce for bread. My mother was an excellent cook...
Notes From Poland •

New biography reveals remarkable life of female Polish resistance fighter

By Stuart Dowell
In the well-populated pantheon of Poland’s Second World War heroes, few figures shine as bright as Elżbieta Zawacka. She operated as an undercover courier in occupied Europe, was the sole woman in an elite Polish paratrooper group, and was only the second woman in the Polish army to achieve the rank of brigadier general.
A new biography, Agent Zo – whose title refers to Zawacka’s nom de guerre – explores her life and achievements. According to its author, Clare Mulley, one of th...
Notes From Poland •

Bergen-Belsen baby solves lifelong mystery after identifying Polish resistance dad

A Jewish woman who was born in the Bergen-Belsen camp and whose mother escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto has finally solved the life-long riddle of her father’s identity by discovering that he was a hero of the Polish Home Army resistance movement who was injured in the Warsaw Uprising.

In a remarkable quest that spans decades and continents, Elana Milman, who lives in Israel, at the end of March this year finally tracked down her Polish family through a blend of modern DNA technology and traditio
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Extraordinary story of secret ‘letter-writing group’ who used own URINE as invisible ink to reveal death camp horrors

In the darkest recesses of Hitler’s hellish concentration camp system, four young Polish Girl Guides were desperate for the world to know about the barbaric experiments that were being carried out on them.

Their one means of contact with the outside world was the monthly, heavily censored letter they were allowed to send to their families in Lublin.

The system they came up with was to write letters in invisible ink using their own urine. The idea was genius, but the story of how they let their
  •

'My mum was kidnapped by Hitler's SS!'

During World War II, the Germans kidnapped, Germanised and sent up to 200,000 ‘racially suitable’ Polish children to the Third Reich for adoption to senior Nazis in an attempt to breed an elite for Hitler’s thousand-year Reich.

Those who did not meet their racist criteria were incinerated at Auschwitz, subjected to cruel medical experiments or expelled to other parts of German-occupied Poland.

The majority of those who were Germanised lived their whole lives not knowing they had been torn away
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Beaten, starved and tortured: The horrifying story of Hitler’s concentration camp for children

Among the tragedies that the Germans inflicted on Poland and its people during the Second World War, one has been almost totally lost from the collective memory, yet as much as any other it exposes the cruelty of the occupation, this time towards the youngest and most vulnerable of its victims.

The ‘concentration’ camp for Polish children in the central Polish city of Łódź, renamed Litzmannstadt by the Germans, which was set up 76 years ago on December 1, 1942, stands out in the German camp sys

Contact Me

stuart@stuartdowell.pl, +48 507664021