They say that the best way to learn a language is to learn while you are young.

I could not agree more.

My path into becoming a freelance translator, as for many translators, was traced from a very young age and guided by my parents.

Born in the U.S. of a Swiss father and Brazilian mother, my exploration of languages started at a very young age, and it never let up as my parents started to work for a non profit that would have us traveling the world four years at a time.

Although born in the United States, ironically English would become one of the last languages I mastered.

Not many months after my birth (in Vermont) my father was offered a job with a large non-profit that did development work throughout the world, and thus we began to travel and I became a sponge for new languages.

Our first stop was Colombia where we lived 4 years and I learned Spanish with the sing song accent of the Colombian pacific coast, my mother all the while teaching me her mother tongue, Portuguese. Before I could walk properly I already had two mother tongues.

At the age of four, we were sent off to a new post in what was then called Upper Volta (now Burkina Faso).
There, with the help of a tutor named Rose, I started to learn English and then French (as it was the official language) and Morre the local dialect of the Mossi peolple. I was now six and spoke five languages fluently...

After this we moved to Senegal(French) and then Bolivia(Spanish), and then, suddenly, I was ready to go back to the U.S. in order to start University.

Throughout those years growing up, I had the privilege of attending outstanding international schools where education was often bi-lingual. Also, my personality always drove me to become a part of the local culture and surround myself with friends who would push me to strive for linguistic excellence, no matter where I was.

When I am asked about source language and target languages, about skill sets and areas of interests, it tends to baffle me. It is all confusing... Translating is natural to me. It is something I have done since I was in grade school when my teachers would pull me out of class so that I could translate something for them, or when my father would take me to the field so I could interpret from whatever local language into English. It never mattered what was being talked about, if you really know the languages, translation comes easy.

Everyone says I have a good ear, but my passion is travel, and traveling has costs. It was a natural step for me to become a freelance translator, mixing my skill and passion harmoniously. A language flows in another flows out. Sometimes if it doesn't flow just right, google translate does the trick.

Thank you for taking the time to read about me, any other question feel free to ask.
As long as it is in French, Spanish, English or Portuguese please!)

Michael Fanghaenel.