From Lima to Paris: A Freelance Interpreter’s Cross-Cultural Journey with Camila Fernández De Paredes

Camila Fernández De Paredes is a Peruvian professional interpreter based in Paris, France. She works across three language pairs – French, English, and Spanish – and has built her freelance practice around interpreting for international conferences, high-stakes seminars, business meetings, and organizations working in global sports, cultural exchange, and cross-border collaboration.

In this edition of Cross-Cultural Communication we meet Camila to hear how she built a freelance interpreting career that spans continents, cultures, and languages. Born and raised in Lima, Peru, and now based in Paris, Camila brings a unique dual perspective as a Latin American professional working within the European market. Her story is one of adaptation, resilience, and the quiet power of interpretation to connect people, cultures, and moments that matter.

And with that introduction, we hand over to Camila to share her Cross-Cultural Communication story.

Finding My Way Into Interpretation

I fell in love with languages before I even knew interpretation existed as a career. Growing up in Lima, I was exposed to other cultures from a very young age, especially American culture. Latin America tends to look at and consume a lot of content from the US, and I always had the best memories of my English teacher from kindergarten. My grandfather traveled often and would come back with stories about the places he had visited, and family members who had emigrated to the US or Europe kept those cultural connections alive in our home.

When I was thirteen or fourteen, I read a newspaper article about one of the only two universities in Peru that offered translation as a career. Back then, there were very few certified interpreters or translators in the country. Something clicked. I remember thinking, this is what I want to do. I don’t want to do anything else.

My family was not entirely sure what to make of it. One of my grandfathers asked if I would be an English teacher. I told him it could be, but it was more than that.

I studied translation and interpretation in college. My original dream was to translate books because I have loved reading since I was four years old. But when I took my first English for Interpreters course and did an exercise in an interpretation booth, everything changed. I loved it more than anything, and I knew I wanted to be an interpreter.

From Translation to Interpretation

The interpreting market can be tricky and hard to enter, so for the first four years after graduating, I worked as a translator. I was what I would call a translation junkie. I loved to translate. I would spend all my weekends working, taking on more jobs, more projects, because I just loved the work so much.

But interpretation was always the goal. Slowly, someone would call me for a booth assignment. Then another person. Little by little, I transitioned from translation to interpretation almost seamlessly. Today I am primarily an interpreter, though I still take some translation projects from long-term clients who believed in me from the beginning.

Building a Multilingual Practice

When I introduce myself, I often explain interpretation using a familiar image. Do you remember watching the Oscars and hearing a voice translating the speeches of the actors in real time? That is what interpreters do. Not me personally at the Oscars, but I am one of the people who does that kind of work.

Interpreters work orally. Translators work with written text. The distinction sounds simple, but each one is a different craft.

I work across three language pairs: French to English, French to Spanish, English to Spanish, and vice versa. Many interpreters focus on just one pair, so people often ask how I ended up with several. The truth is I did not plan it. When I relocated to France in 2023, a close friend who worked as a recruiter at a translation and interpretation company asked if I would be interested in French to English work. I did not feel comfortable at first because interpreters are trained to work toward their native language, and English is not mine. She convinced me to take the test anyway. I passed. Since then, French to English has become the language pair I work in most often.

Cultural Weight and Client Relationships

Working across three languages means working across three cultures, and each one shapes how I show up professionally.

With my Peruvian clients, many of whom I have known since I was twenty and freshly graduated, there is a warmth and informality built on years of trust. We can be more relaxed while still respecting professional boundaries.

With English-speaking companies, I feel very comfortable. English feels familiar to me from a lifetime of exposure.

With French clients, it is more complicated. Even after years of studying French culture, I know I will always feel a little less intimate with that community because it is not my country. It is not negative. It is simply different. Europeans in general are not as warm as Latin Americans are. The French, in particular, are very straightforward. They will tell you up front what they think, whether it is good or bad. For someone coming from a culture that is not straightforward at all, that can be difficult to adjust to.

The foundation for me is simple: do not take anything personal. If you do, you cannot do this job. The interpreter’s role means being your own company, your own accountant, your own sales representative. You have to sell yourself in a market where clients will often prefer a European language professional over a South American one. But if you keep the mindset that this is business, not personal, everything becomes easier.

The Advantage of Cultural Flexibility

Coming from Latin America has given me a professional advantage I did not fully appreciate until I moved to Europe. Latin Americans tend to be very flexible – about rates, about conditions, about scheduling.

Networking is essential in this field, and you never know how a client is going to contact you. I have received random WhatsApp messages, calls from people who found my number through a friend of a friend, all sorts of unexpected introductions. That open-mind policy has served me well.

One of my most memorable assignments came exactly this way. Someone from a group of young interpreters I had met at a European Parliament conference in Brussels sent a message asking if anyone was available for a gig in Paris on a specific date. I replied that I was. She passed my number to a friend, who then reached out via SMS to tell me she was getting married and wanted an interpreter for her wedding ceremony in a Paris church.

The bride was Chinese. The groom was German. The priest was French. The guests came from across many nationalities. They had met while doing research in France and communicated with each other in English. Even the wedding brochures were translated. It was a real cross-cultural moment – a Peruvian interpreter, an Italian sound technician who came in for the booth setup, a French venue, and a couple celebrating their love in a language that belonged to none of them.

Later, the bride told me she had checked with local Parisian interpretation companies and it had been far more convenient to fly the Italian technician in with equipment and hire me than to work with a local firm. That flexibility – being open to unusual assignments, being willing to help solve logistical problems – is a real asset that Latin American interpreters bring to the European market.

When Interpretation Makes a Real Impact

Some assignments remind you why this work matters.

I once had the privilege of working with an international sports federation at an event in Rio de Janeiro. Between the competitions and matches, the federation held mandatory educational sessions for young athletes on preventing abuse in sport. The International Olympic Committee now requires these programs, and this was the first time the federation had ever hired an interpreter for that portion of the event.

For me personally, this was one of the most remarkable moments of my career. I am an advocate against abuse of women and children in every form, and I have done volunteer work in that space my whole adult life. When they asked me to interpret for this program, I did not hesitate.

The challenge was that they had not fully anticipated the language needs. They had assumed all the young athletes, aged ten to fifteen, would speak English. But we had athletes from South America, Africa, Asia, and Europe, and many of the kids were completely lost. There was no booth. There was no equipment. Just me and the speakers.

I had done written translations of these training materials earlier from English into French, Spanish, and Portuguese, so I already knew the terminology. That preparation was a huge game changer. But the interpretation itself had to happen in the moment, consecutively, across two languages at once. English to French. Then English to Spanish. I had to draw the line at Portuguese in the same room because doing three consecutive languages simultaneously was simply too much to ask of any interpreter.

What I remember most from that assignment was watching the young athletes’ faces change as they finally understood what was being taught. Some of the coaches from Spanish-speaking countries approached me afterward, in tears, to thank me. They told me the topic was so important, and they had never realized how much they were missing until they could actually follow along in their own language.

I could not cry in front of everyone during the sessions, but later that night in my hotel room, I did. Interpretation carries a real weight when it works. It changes what happens in a room. It reaches people who would otherwise be shut out.

Working with Language Service Companies

Time zones can be tricky when you split your life between continents. I have had assignments where I forgot to update my calendar after moving between Paris and Lima, and the wrong time zone caused problems. But I have been very fortunate to work with a strong team of language service providers who make the coordination smoother.

With TLD in particular, there is constant communication and consistent follow-up. Even though I have never met any of my project managers in person, I feel a genuine relationship in the messages we exchange. You can tell when a language services company treats you as a person rather than just someone who fills a job. That care makes the work smoother, easier, and more motivating. It also makes you want to keep taking assignments and stay engaged.

That kind of relationship matters more than most people realize. Interpretation is a demanding field, and having partners who value the human side of the work makes all the difference.

AI and the Future of Interpretation

Almost every time I introduce myself these days, someone asks me about AI. It is a real concern in our profession, and I understand why.

Recently, one of the largest technology conferences in the world was held in Barcelona with no human interpreters. The interpretation was fully automated. After the event, I heard so many complaints about the quality that it confirmed what many of us already knew. AI can do certain things. It cannot yet do our full job.

For court procedures, government-level discussions, high-stakes negotiations, and sensitive conversations, you cannot trust AI. AI has no accountability. AI is biased. And AI cannot recognize its own biases the way a human interpreter can.

At the same time, I do not think AI is going away, and I do not think we should be afraid of it. My mindset – which I shared at a European Parliament conference on AI and interpretation – is that interpreters need to learn how to work with the machine and how to train it, so it works with us and for us rather than replacing us.

Interpreters and language professionals sometimes shy away from the commercial side of our profession because we are so passionate about the craft. But we have to engage with it, because if we do not, someone else who does not have our expertise will make those decisions for us.

I use AI for preparation work – glossary building, terminology research, summarizing background materials. But I am very careful never to feed confidential client information into these systems. You have no idea how that data will be used or who will access it. Confidentiality is our responsibility as professionals, and no efficiency gain is worth compromising a client’s trust.

The industry will keep changing. Our job is to keep proving that human judgment, cultural awareness, and ethical accountability are things AI still cannot replicate.

Advice for Aspiring Interpreters

If you want to be an interpreter, know that it will not be easy – but if you work hard enough, you can do it.

Keep learning. Travel as much as you can. When travel is not possible, take every opportunity to talk with people from other cultures. Make friends with people who come from the culture of the language you want to work in. That is going to help more than you can imagine, because context and culture are the most important part of what we do.

And do not give up. Do not take rejection personally. Do not take criticism personally. Just keep going.

This field asks a lot of you. But it gives back moments where you know your work genuinely changed something – a wedding celebration that would not have happened without you, a young athlete who finally understood what was being taught, a client who felt heard for the first time in a language that was not their own.

Final Thoughts

Interpretation is a profession built on adaptation. Adaptation to languages. To cultures. To time zones. To unexpected assignments. To evolving technology.

For me, being a Peruvian interpreter in Paris means constantly navigating two worlds – the warm, flexible Latin American approach I grew up with, and the direct, structured European market I now work within. Both have shaped how I do my work, and I would not trade either perspective.

At the heart of everything, though, is a simple truth: interpretation matters because people matter. Every interpreted conversation is someone being heard. Every good assignment is a bridge that would not otherwise exist. Every wedding, every training session, every business meeting where we help two sides truly understand each other – that is why we do this.

Key takeaways from this conversation:

Flexibility is an asset, not a weakness. Being open to unusual assignments and cultural styles has been a professional advantage in my career.
Cultural fluency is as important as language fluency. Understanding how different cultures communicate is essential to serving clients well.
Interpretation carries emotional weight. Some assignments genuinely change lives, and honoring that responsibility is part of the profession.
AI is a tool, not a replacement. Interpreters need to engage with AI thoughtfully, protect confidentiality, and continue proving what human judgment brings that machines cannot.
Relationships with language service providers matter. Working with partners who treat interpreters as people, not just contractors, makes everything smoother.
Never take anything personal. In a global freelance profession, this mindset is the foundation of everything.

At The Language Doctors, we are proud to work with interpreters like Camila who bring cultural depth, professional integrity, and genuine care to every assignment. Interpretation is not just a service – it is the human bridge that makes cross-cultural communication possible, and we are honored to help build those bridges every day.

Cross-Cultural Communication is produced by The Language Doctors, delivering certified translation and professional interpretation in 200+ languages worldwide. New episodes twice a month.

Listen to the full conversation with Camila Fernández De Paredes on Spotify, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts.

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