Hello,

My name is Gabriella Zimmermann.

I am French but I live and work in Venice, my favorite city, since long time.

I discovered Venice on a weekend with a friend whom I met in Munich, where I was living at the time. Arriving very early in the morning by the night train is one of the strongest memories of my life. I then walked everywhere for two days: in the fog on Saturday and under a wonderful March sun the following day. I understood immediately that this was my city and after this revelation, I could not sleep until I was able to find a way to live there.

The day arrived couple of years later and since that day I live in Venice, for which I feel an unconditional love.

After having taught German and Italian in France, I taught French as foreign language at Cà Foscari University for more than twenty years, working simultaneously as a translator and as an interpreter.

Then Venice, the object of my passion, became also the object of my research. I wrote a Ph.D thesis in sociolinguistics analyzing the literature pages that it has inspired for centuries as well as the urban discourse of nowadays.

Afterwards I wrote a literary guide, Venise au fil des mots, published in 2006 by Pimientos and then an emotional story of the Venetian Republic, Venise au fil des temps, published the following year by the same publishing house.

In 2019 I wrote my most recent book Venise à livre ouvert. Histoire de la librairie française (the story of the French bookshop in Venice) published by La Tour Verte. 

I am now dedicating myself to my second field of interest: memory. I am « obsessed » by the loss of lives, of memories, of “the words said”. This is the reason I feel the need to dedicate so much attention and care to others.

For instance, I wrote an article on the Marinaretti: The pupils of the ex-school boat Giorgio Cini returned to Venice in April 2014 from the Belem. The boat was bought in the meantime by Earl Cini who converted it.

I also wrote with Claudie Cachard, writer and psychoanalyst from Jewish Hungarian descent, a book entitled Mais où ira le blanc? (Where will the white go? an allusion to Shakespeare’s quote « Where goes the white when the snow melts »). In this book we tell our crossed memories of daughters of immigrants and we strive to understand how the past has influenced our professional choices and our values.

This book, « written with four hands and two hearts », as she used to say so nicely, has not been published yet, but it saved her words and her life experience because she passed away suddenly (her son wrote the last pages) and it surely represents one of the last accounts from the victims of antisemitism.
I am currently writing a book I plan on calling Les femmes de ma vie (The Women of My Life) in which I want to pay homage to all the women who influenced and guided my personal life, from my mother and my grandmothers to my dearest friends, but also the heroines of films or novels who deeply touched me.

Rich of these experiences,

I can be for you — individuals or companies — :

• An interpreter (Italian/French and vice-versa). I translate mainly for academic and cultural lectures (among them the Film Festival Mostra di Venezia) but economic, technical and legal fields are not my specialty.

• A translator of essays and novels (from German, Italian or English into French); I translated Donna Leon’s mystery novels since 2014

• The author of articles or other kinds of research linked to the city of Venice and its history

• The author of memoirs, biographies or family stories

It goes without saying that I make a commitment to safeguard the privacy of the informations which are conveyed to me.