About Us
David Stephenson is the principal of Bull City Language Services. An eighth-generation North Carolinian, he studied at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf. His love of languages led him into translating, part-time beginning in 1982 and full-time in 1986. He held positions in the tourism industry and at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in the interim.
David is a 30-year resident of Durham, North Carolina (the Bull City), where he serves as vice president of the Tuscaloosa-Lakewood Neighborhood Association and volunteers for the Coalition to Unchain Dogs/Beyond Fences and Durham Literacy Center.
Positions & Credentials
David has been a member of the American Translators Association (ATA) since 1983 and has been a Croatian-to-English certification grader since 2004. He has been a member of ATA’s Certification Committee since 2007, including seven years as Chair and five years as Deputy Chair. He has also served on ATA’s Nominating and Leadership Development Committee and is currently the webmaster for ATA’s Dutch Language Division. He was the 2022 recipient of the ATA Impact Award for his work with the certification program.
David is a past president of the Carolina Association of Translators and Interpreters (CATI), of which he has been a member since 1989, and is also a member of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). David is an ATA Certified Translator (CT) in German to English, Dutch to English, and Croatian to English.
