I translate Portuguese into English and my specialty is legal translation. I am an American living in Brazil for most of each year, and have spent one quarter of my life in São Paulo. I first learned Portuguese while an undergraduate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of California (UCLA), but did not use it much until I married a Brazilian and returned with him to Brazil. I was a rather unusual souvenir! Most people just buy a T-shirt.

After moving to Brazil, I began working in the IT industry as a technical writer. I started translating for my employer without any formal training, then enrolled myself in a two-year professional course in translating and interpreting at Associação Alumni to learn how to do it properly. At the same time, I completed a doctorate in Linguistics at the University of São Paulo, with a dissertation on legal translation. I discovered a latent love for languages, squashed by my high school French teacher, and I have worked as a freelance translator since 2000.

Despite my background in engineering (BS) and physics (MS), I kept receiving contracts and other legal documents to translate. I felt I could not translate them well without some legal knowledge, so I did a degree in law (LLB) at the University of London. I now translate legal documents with much more skill and speed!

More importantly, I have found I love to study the law and research comparative law topics, so please see my publications page and additional resources.

I volunteer my time to improve translator professional development and have acted as a director, committee chair, sub-committee chair and division assistant administrator and treasurer at the American Translators Association (ATA).

I am currently president of the IWB (International Wives of Brazilians), a social group in São Paulo that supports foreign wives of Brazilians and the unique challenges we face navigating through life in a culture so unfamiliar to us. I am also a member of the American Bar Association and the Chartered Institute of Linguists.

In my spare time, I play the cello, jog with my dog, Francesca and take pictures. I took the background pictures used on the site in the state of São Paulo. I also like to study difficult languages like Hungarian, just for the heck of it.