Profile: Victoria Torrano

Position: Head of Languages

There are two main aspects to what I do at the BIS. First, I act as a Spanish translator, dealing with a range of economic and financial texts. Then as Head of Languages, I lead a group of eight translators and editors and one terminologist who work in the Bank's five languages. Our biggest challenge is the Annual Report - it takes up the whole of May and June, and always seems to me to herald the arrival of summer.

That is a really busy time for us, with external translators and editors coming and going, but I love the feeling that we're all working towards the same goal. On the Monday of the Annual General Meeting, we all watch the General Manager delivering his speech, and we feel very proud to see how much media attention our work gets.

Before I joined the BIS, I did a masters degree in conference interpretation. I knew nothing about the Bank at the time, or indeed about the banking industry generally. I've been here for eight years now, and I really love it. I think people listen to what we have to say a lot more following the financial crisis, which our research helped to predict.

Basel is a brilliant place to live, and as an added bonus it's halfway between my original home country of Spain and my husband's of Denmark. The city is small enough that you can cycle around but big enough that it feels cosmopolitan and international. What's more, in 10 minutes you can be in the countryside, and even in a different country - Basel is right on the border with France and Germany.

But the best thing about the BIS is the truly international environment. Every day I think and work in three different languages, and my colleagues come from 50 different countries. It's amazing to be able to sit down and have lunch with someone from, say, Brunei - you really learn a lot about stereotyping, and about how to communicate with people in a way that doesn't offend their cultures. It's like travelling around the world without leaving Basel!