About Me

I graduated in Translation and Interpreting and then obtained a Master’s Degree with honors in Literary and Technical Translation (specialty fields: tourism, subtitling and computer game localization).

I also attended a Postgraduate Master’s Course in Translation of Post-Colonial Texts from English to Italian (Literature, Essays, Drama and Cinema). As part of the course program, I worked in a publishing house, translating articles and proofreading English and Italian texts. I also attended a course in Translation of Young Adult Fiction from English to Italian.

I am an AITI associate member (number 218103), a IAPTI member (number 923), a ProZ.com Certified PRO member in the English > Italian language pair, a Women in Localization (Italy Chapter & Global Community) member and a member of the ITI Beauty Fashion and Luxury Network; I am also registered as an English-language expert with the Camera di Commercio di Taranto (Taranto Chamber of Commerce, Italy), number 341.

I believe that continuing professional development is of the utmost importance, so I regularly attend conferences and webinars about specialized translation, localization, transcreation, marketing, new media, etc. I attended an online course about software and website localization, an online course about translation for the fashion industry, an online course about the transcreation of marketing & advertising texts, an online course about translating for the cosmetics industry, the advanced modules of an online course about translating fashion & luxury (make-up, jewelry, watchmaking, tourism, etc.), an online course about SEO localization and translation, an online course about SEO and SEA localization and content creation and an online course about translating e-commerce websites and in particular Amazon listings. For a non-exhaustive list of my education & CPD activities, please visit my Education & CPD page.

I am also a writer as a hobby: I attended a creative writing course (prose, poetry, drama, comics) and some of my poems in Italian have been published in anthologies celebrating International Women’s Day in 2016, 2017, 2019 and 2021.

I think that new technologies are hugely important nowadays, so I own a Trados Studio 2017 license and I can also use some other CAT tools such as memoQ, XTM and OmegaT. I got the SDL/RWS Post-Editing Certification; however, I do not use machine translation for my work unless explicitly agreed upon with the client. I have also learned some basic notions of HTML and how to use WordPress.

I am also a founding member of the Words in Travel translator team, specialized in the Travel & Tourism industry.

Valentina Mellone

Professional Translator