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It reads like the plot of some Hollywood blockbuster - an historical piece, set in post-war Europe about the desperate measures that some are driven to in desperate times. But really, it's a story of translations and my grandmother, or at least how I've pieced together the disjointed shards of information on the topic.

Set against the backdrop of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire, the majority of the action takes place in a city dating back to the Stone Age. Known by the German name of Pettau or the Slovenian name of Ptuj, it is a city that had been changed through numerous hands - from the Celts to the Romans, from an Avar state to Slavic princes, then to the Frankish and subsequently Austro-Hungarian Empires. However, after World War I, the majority German-speaking population of the Lower Styria region fell under the auspices of the Kingdom of the Southern Slavs, Yugoslavia.

So this was the situation surrounding my grandmother's formative years. In a politically-oriented family during a turbulent era of German-language-identity, her husband - a man of community standing and several years her elder - became the town mayor in the wake of the Nazi annexation of Lower Styria. As for this man, I know no more, and don't care to know anything else. He was quite possibly killed either in Russia or in Yugoslavia, during or after the war. This doesn't concern my story.

My grandmother, on the other hand, was detained and eventually worked in Maribor (also known by the German name of Marburg). There, her multilingualism paid off, and she was able to work in a local school teaching English, Spanish, Italian and French. She also worked in translation, and provided translation services where the need arose between the civilian, military and refugee population. Of course she never had the opportunity to study abroad, she never learned in France or took French courses London, but instead her talent in languages was able to be realised through geographical proximity and wartime necessit y. There's no need to learn French London or take Italian courses London when one language is spoken over a common border and the other by the resident troops!

That said, I think her French and English translations must have been pretty good, because the unconfirmed rumour goes that my aunt's father was a French solider and my dad's father was an English soldier, but that could be the whisperings of a demented imagination. It's all possible, and not possible, the mysteries of European history and twentieth century displacement.

With the rest of the German-speaking population of Ptuj and Maribor, my grandmother and her infant children were expelled from Yugoslavia to Austria, where they settled for the rest of their days. All except my father, who broke from his past of European intrigue to settle abroad in pursuit of a carefree existence, and hence fathered children who in turn don't even speak German.

How the tables have turned when something as positive as being multilingual represented the old system in his mind. Growing up in the United Kingdom, only familiar and fluent in English, my siblings and I have only recently realised what we've missed out on. We could never operate our own translation service, and follow our grandmother's footsteps, but perhaps we should feel glad that the need to do so has never arisen. I'm currently taking Spanish classes London and think I will branch out to also try German courses London when I get the hang of Spanish a little better. It's starting slowly, and maybe a little too late, but I think it's a st ep in the right direction - and as they say, better late than never!