Dr. Frank Nhat Trinh (also known as Trinh Nhat) is a linguist, language educator and a professional translator/interpreter with a BA (TEFL), MA (Hons), and a PhD in Linguistics. He taught English in Vietnam and has taught Vietnamese and English in Australia for a period of 30 years. His teaching experience is enhanced by his previous work as a translator/broadcaster with the BBC World Service in London in the early 1980s. His contributions to languages include approximately 20 years’ training and assessment of Vietnamese community translators and interpreters at the University of Western Sydney and 25 years’ serving as a member/chairperson of the Vietnamese language panel for the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters (NAATI) in Canberra. In 1983 he was accredited with a NAATI Professional Translator Level (English and Vietnamese, both directions).

In 2001, he received the Specialist Legal Interpreting Training Certificate awarded by the School of Law and the School of Language & Linguisitics of the University of Western Sydney.

During the period between 1985 and 2011, he served as a member of Vietnamese Interpreters and Translators Panel for the Ethnic Affairs Commission of NSW (presently Community Relations Commission For a Multicultural NSW).

His views on the search for translation equivalence between English and Vietnamese were expressed in three successive issues of the California-based American Vietnamese-language 21st Century Magazine, and in a series of ten interviews on Australian SBS Radio Vietnamese broadcasts in 1999. His comprehensive report in 1985 entitled “The Making of a Court Interpreter”, on a well-publicized murder case at the Supreme Court of Victoria in Australia, where he worked as court interpreter for a period of six weeks, was well-received by both his students and colleagues. His writings featuring articles on light-hearted topics, and his translations of Vietnamese short stories, were recently carried on various Vietnamese international webpages as well as newspapers and journals.

His extensive travels throughout Asia and the Western world and to Vietnam over many years have contributed to his considerable knowledge of world affairs.

His 100000-word doctoral thesis on English and Vietnamese collocations, with particular emphasis on interpreting/translation, has recently led him to start compling his first bilingual English-Vietnamese collocations dictionary for advanced English language learners and Vietnamese professional translators and interpreters, which is due for completion hopefully in 2015.