Carmelina is the Founder and Director of the Spanish Is EZ International Language Service, located in South Florida and Montreal, Canada. She speaks four languages—Spanish, English, French and Italian.
Her charming and pleasant style will make you forget that her language services, like simultaneous interpretation, are a demanding, highly skilled craft. A native born Spanish speaker from Lima, Peru, she’s had a life-long fascination with languages, their study, and most of all helping others.
She started early in life with a move to Montreal where she took a year-long immersion class in French. She recalls those days fondly, and comments how one teacher spoke Martinique French, which she thought had the most beautiful accent. She also loved the diversity of her classmates from Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Nordic countries including Russia. Also, she was quite taken with Montreal for its cosmopolitan feel.
Later, at Concordia University in Montreal there was a program to become a translator of Spanish to English and French. She says, “Since I loved different languages and cultures, I realized this is what I wanted to do. Also, the program gave me the opportunity to learn other languages. So I learned Italian.”
At the University she became a private tutor for Spanish students. She says, “I loved to help the students with their writing assignments, pronunciation, grammar and translation. I also placed an ad in the newspaper for Spanish tutoring for professionals and travelers wanting to learn a fast track vocabulary and idiomatic expressions. Some of my former Spanish students are still my friends today.
Professionally, Carmelina has helped people communicate in many industries including Banking (Citicorp), the Investment industry, Time Sharing, Tourism, Hospitality, Advertising and Marketing, to name a few. She has helped her clients brush up on their Spanish or French before vacations, businessmen before traveling to South America, interpreting for major conventions, teleconferences, private tutoring, and written translation of documents.
A lover of travel and other cultures, she worked as an international flight attendant, which gave her the opportunity to travel to Europe weekly and practice her language skills. So when not working, you won’t be surprised that her favorite holiday activity is to feed her fascination with other cultures with a trip to a foreign country. She has visited Italy, Switzerland, Monaco, Brussels, Mexico, Peru, Canada and more. Her most recent trip was to Spain.
Carmelina considers herself a resident of Montreal or Pompano Beach, Florida, depending on when you ask her. When she’s not teaching or translating you can often find her searching out a new ethnic restaurant or club, or soaking up sun at the beach.