About Devine Language
Hi, I’m Margherita Devine
I’m the one-woman band that is Devine Language. I’ve been working with language in some fashion for the last 15 years, whether as a writer, editor, tutor, or brand consultant.
You are highly unlikely to confuse me with any other Margherita Devines, which is both a Google blessing and curse.
My experience: the short story
Since 2012, I’ve worked as both a freelancer and in-house at agencies. I cut my teeth at Lambie-Nairn in London (now Superunion), sharpened my skills at Landor’s New York office, and most recently broadened my portfolio at The Writer in London.
Before that, I did a traineeship at the City of London Festival. It not only taught me about marketing, but gave me an appreciation for historic London churches (and some wildcard pub quiz knowledge). I’ve also tutored English and Latin, and done some academic editing and proofreading.
I’ve worked for over 50 clients in nearly every kind of industry. While I’ve mostly split my time between New York and London, I’ve also worked with clients in Europe and Asia.
You can have a look at my LinkedIn here.
How I got into it all, or, that time I did a summer of spoken Latin
I’ve always loved playing with language: I made terrible puns from an early age, I’ve dabbled in five languages, and I have two degrees in Classics, with some linguistics on the side.
In university, that led me to the art of translation. I took loads of literature classes, and worked as an undergraduate research assistant for the chair of the Classics department. I tutored Latin for the intro classes, but I mostly worked on a collection of essays my professor was editing. I smoothed out their writing into native English (it was a very linguistically diverse group of authors), and checked translations for the Latin excerpts.
The next step was obviously to do spoken Latin in Rome, like a totally normal person. Reginald Foster barked at us in Latin six days a week, drank a large beer every class, and remains the most inspiring teacher I’ve ever had. And the most unorthodox – ‘Every bum and prostitute spoke in ancient Rome better Latin than you, it’s not that hard!’ was a common refrain. We made even the stuffiest, oldest texts feel like they were written today.
When you’re unspooling grammar every day, you start to appreciate how every small change – swapping a word, changing punctuation – can shift the feeling of a piece of writing. Small tweaks can make a text clearer, certainly. But by spending so much time in translation, I realised how much power we have over our readers. To persuade, excite, frighten. Translation gave me the gift of finding satisfaction in settling on just the right words.
In some ways, I view everything I work on as a translation challenge – what can we change, add, rethink, so that we’re getting it right? If I rewrite an email to be friendlier, for instance, I need to figure out what phrases and structures are making it feel terse now, and ‘translate’ them away. That satisfaction of solving those puzzles has stayed with me – and I’m lucky enough to have turned it into my day job.
When I’m not writing
I (perhaps unsurprisingly) like to read a lot, mostly pop linguistics and crime thrillers. If there isn’t a murder or reference to Proto-Indo-European, I’m probably not interested.
I travel a fair amount, and like to geek out on planning trips. I also enjoy the cult of Peloton, listening to Stomp and Holler music, and hiking.
I have no ambitions to write the Great American Novel, but I do have a blog in the works that’s only reviews of the bread and butter at fancy restaurants.