Ana Lourenço

Question and Answer

• What is your name?
  • Ana Lourenço
• Where do you live?
  • Sintra, Portugal
• What made you decide to become a translator or interpreter?
  • I always found the knowledge on different cultures and habits extremely interesting. The need to communicate in a foreign language and the commitment do develop a skill that was hidden somewhere in my head made me decide yo become a translator. I was finishing another language course in France and decided to apply for university a year later.
• List one strength that you think sets you apart from your colleagues.
  • Extreme willpower
• Name the one thing that you most enjoy in your translating or interpreting career.
  • Imagining people reading my translations
• We all have worked on those not-so-perfect assignments. Write about one such assignment that was not ideal and what you learned from it.
  • This assignment came on the first year of my career. It was a legal translation, something I had never dealt with before and that I should have never accepted due to my lack of knowledge in the area. I then learnt from the conferences I started to attend that one should never accept a job on a completely unknown matter. One should specialize, instead.
• If you could go back in time to when you were just starting out as a translator or interpreter, what advice would you give to your younger self?
  • Beware of false translation agencies. Start reading newsletters on your desired speciality and suggest their translation to the author for free. This way you can get your first visibility. Join translation facebook, linkedin, twitter translation groups.
• Name one resource – such as a phone app, CAT tool, website, and so forth – that you find especially helpful in your translating or interpreting work.
  • Wordfast, www.encyclopedia.com, Trello, Hootsuite (I'm starting with this one) Business School for Translators Network
• What’s the best book you’ve read this year?
  • The Business Guide For Translators by Marta Stelmaszak