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About me

Do you want to know more about me?

My name is Irene Izarra and I am a translator and interpreter in Spanish, Catalan, Chinese and English.

I studied my bachelor’s degree on Translation and Interpreting at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, choosing English and Chinese as foreign languages. I studied Chinese Language and Culture at Peking University and Guangxi Normal University. In addition, I did a master’s degree at Guangxi Normal University, where I specialized in Mandarin Chinese Linguistics.

I have lived in China for four years, during which I was the recipient of two scholarships granted by the Government of the People’s Republic of China: the Confucius Institute Scholarship and the Chinese Government Scholarship.

During my professional career I have worked as a translator, interpreter and cultural mediator both in public services and private companies. My international experience allowed me to acquire a broad vision of languages, cultures and several problems that can arise from them in different social and professional contexts.

My goal is to provide language and culture support and advice to those companies and individuals who work or operate in fields where communication barriers exist, as well as promoting foreign language learning, translation, and interculturality.

Find out more in my LinkedIn profile.

Now that you know a little more about me, I will briefly explain the origin of my name in Spanish and Chinese, which are visible in my professional logo.

安旖旎

Given the great semantic charge that Chinese characters contain, it is very common that, at the time of choosing a name for children, families use characters with positive meanings or that describe characteristics that are expected of the person to whom the name is assigned. Furthermore, the structure of Chinese names does not follow the same order as that of Western names, since they are generally formed by three characters (symbols), of which the first one is the surname and is placed before the name.

My name is Irene and it is of Greek origin, since it comes from the word Ειρήνη which means “peace”. I always liked the meaning, therefore when I chose my Chinese name, I wanted to keep the semantics in one way or another. This is the reason why, although it is not equivalent to my original surname, I transferred this meaning to my “Chinese surname” 安, a character that is pronounced ān and which literally means “peace”. Also, I added the characters 旖旎 which I chose, firstly, due to its phonetics, since their pronunciation in pinyin is yǐnǐ and it bears some similarity with my real name and, secondly, because they are two characters whose etymology is quite poetic and that means “graceful”, “elegant” or “delicate”.