From the top of a ridge, with breathtaking views over the snowy summit of the Illimani volcano (6.439 m) in the middle of the Andes, only a few stretches away from the capital of Bolivia (La Paz), Stéphane, our ‘globe-trotter-translator’ is concentrating on a new text freshly arrived from our Bures-sur-Yvette offices.

It’s been several years now that Stéphane, coordinator of the Parkswatch NGO and founder of GreenVest, an online donation system in support of imperilled national parks, relies on free-lance translation work to support his biodiversity conservation projects throughout Latin America, where he established his quarters since 2001. Generally on the road, and avid outdoor enthusiast, his translations are usually carried out in rather “empirical” conditions, with the help of a solar panel and light camping equipment, and sent from small Internet cafes in villages that often don’t appear on the map. The only missing piece is a satellite antenna that will allow him to remain complete autonomous from urban areas. Certain events that happened to him during his translations for Primoscrib are better left untold, as can easily be inferred from the pictures below.

At any rate, and in spite of the nuisances occasionally experienced in the outdoors, Stéphane’s experience is living proof, shall it still be necessary, that translations activities are perfectly suited for travelling, and even long-term nomadic lifestyles. Adding to this the emerging and increasingly affordable Internet access technologies, which are constantly pushing the barriers of the ‘connected’ world, the globe-trotting translator character is probably bound to proliferate in the coming years!