Norbert Zänker passed the state examination as a German/English interpreter at the Ministry of Culture in Baden-Württemberg in 1966 and has been a freelance interpreter in the fields of law and economics ever since.
He has worked as a court interpreter at Berlin courts from 1968; chief interpreter at the “United States Court for Berlin” 1979/80; Labour Relations interpreter for the allied airlines Pan American, DAN-AIR, British Airways 1975/90; conference interpreter at political meetings from 1985; television interpreter from 1995.
He currently works exclusively as an interpreter at conferences, for television stations, in notary’s offices and criminal proceedings with 100 to 150 assignments a year.
He was a part-time language teacher at the Berlin School for Language Mediation (formerly translator training of the BDÜ forerunner ‘Reichsfachschaft für das Dolmetscherwesen’) in 1966/71; lecturer for economic translation English-German at the Academy for Foreign Languages in 1971/75; lecturer for English at the Free University of Berlin in 1974/78; lecturer in Marketing English at the Academy for Business Administration Berlin 1977/79; lecturer in British Banking at the Technical University Berlin 1979/86; examiner at the State Examination Office for Interpreters and Translators Berlin 1989/99; lecturer in Legal Translation German-English at the Humboldt University Berlin 2004/06.
Norbert Zänker has been a member of the BDÜ (German Association of Interpreters and Translators) since 1966. He was the second and first chairman of the BDÜ regional association in Berlin in 1976/96 and has given about 100 lectures on further education in the last 20 years. He was Federal Treasurer of the BDÜ in 1995/97, Vice-President in 2000/02 and is the editor and author of several books in the field of interpreting and translation.