Our dear friend and colleague Beatriz Rodriguez, president of the Colegio de Traductores Públicos de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires (CTPCBA) and former FIT Council member, passed away suddenly on 24 May 2023. The list of her positions, work, and accomplishments is almost endless. So too were her qualifications, not to mention her virtues and qualities – both as a professional and as a person. She had a long and illustrious career at the CTPCBA, at the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), and in the national and international world of translation. In 2003, she co-founded FIT CRAL, which later became FIT’s Regional Centre for Latin America (FIT LatAm), and served as its first chair. She also served on FIT Council from 2011 to 2014.
Beatriz specialised in legal, medical, and financial translation. She was also an attorney and a teacher of French. In 2015, she became the director of the sworn translation degree programme at UBA and she started her third term as CTPCBA president in 2021. She transcended both the academic and professional worlds, so much so that in 2005, she was named Chevalier de l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government, and in 2023, she received the Saint Jerome Medal from the Colegio de Traductores del Perú (CTP).
For 39 years, Beatriz worked as a French–Spanish translator and university lecturer, both in Argentina and abroad. She was a regular speaker at national and international conferences. She led the organisation of the Latin American Congress on Translation and Interpreting (held seven times since 1996) and, jointly with the UBA School of Law, the University Congress on Translation and Interpreting Training, held for the third time in 2022.
She translated La Théorie Interpretative de la Traduction by Marianne Lederer into Spanish and, together with sworn translator Alide Drienisienia, the Civil and Commercial Code of the Argentine Republic into French.
The CTPCBA was her second home. She was a member of the Professional Practice Committee – just one of the many ways she served. During the CTPCBA elections in 1994, she was the legal representative of the list of candidates that did not win, but she nevertheless encouraged them to persist. In 1996, she was appointed secretary general by the Board, and she became president for the first time in 2000. She was re-elected in 2008 and 2021. The roles she held within CTPCBA stand out because of her ongoing and profound commitment to the professional development of sworn translators in Argentina in particular, and to the translation profession as a whole.
Beatriz is survived by her dear family and many, many friends.
She left an everlasting impression on the CTPCBA and its members and on the hearts of all those who were fortunate enough to meet her or work alongside her. She will be missed.
CTPCBA Board and FIT