Rafa Lombardino is a native Brazilian settled in the USA. She is certified by the American Translators Association (ATA) for English < > Portuguese translations. She has a professional Certificate for Translation in Spanish to English from the University of California San Diego Extension, where she currently teaches Tools and Technology in Translation and Introduction to Swordfish.
She is the President and CEO of Word Awareness, Inc., a vibrant network of professional and reliable team members who work in close cooperation. Her team works mostly in business communications, including press releases, news clippings, and corporate presentations. They also work with employee and client surveys and human resource materials, such as company-sponsored training and on-line courses, so that corporations can have a better understanding of their markets and workforce and, in turn, employees can align themselves with global strategies being implemented worldwide.
Rafa is a passionate translator. For her, translation always brings excitement to life. She always says that there’s never a dull moment when you work with translations: “One day you may be working in software localization; the next day you are translating a company’s website that will motivate employees to eat smarter and exercise to take good care of their health. Then you may have an instructional safety video to subtitle, some personal documents to translate (diplomas, school transcripts, or birth/marriage certificates,) or a large corporate responsibility report so that customers know how a company gives back to their neighboring communities.”
Since 2011, Rafa has also been actively involved in book translations. She assists self-published authors in making their books in another language, and has translated 14 books to date, with two more in process. Additionally, Rafa now acts as Content Curator at eWordNews.com, a website dedicated to reporting news on book translations, writing, reading, and self-publishing efforts, and her company sponsors a literary project called Contemporary Brazilian Short Stories that promotes authors from Brazil among readers of English. Two books (Vol. 1 in 2012 and Vol. 2 in 2013) were published through this initiative and then a sister site called Cuentos brasileños da la actualidad was created for Spanish readers as well.
Rafa really loves what she does. She enjoys the diversity that comes from her passionate involvement in a variety of translation projects. Here’s how she sums it up in her own words: “I get to interact with so many different people, translate projects about various subjects, and help people communicate across languages and cultures. And the fact that I have my own business allows me to set my own hours, so I can work around my kids' schedules and improve my quality of life.”
She truly believes that being a translator is the career of the future, because it allows for flexibility, diversification, exponential growth and work-life balance.
