J. Angelo Berbotto
About
Angelo qualified as a lawyer and as a translator almost at the same time in the early 2000s. Spanish is his A language (English is B). He worked in a government position in Sydney before moving to London to work in commercial litigation, a position he secured thanks to his skills in French, Italian and Spanish. After completing a Master of Children’s Law in Rome, he left the corporate world to focus on child protection. In England, he represented social services in court, in cases to safeguard children from situations where they were at risk of harm. A child protection assignment in the remote island of St Helena changed the direction of his career when he became the principal lawyer for that British Overseas Territory. Afterwards, he spent a sabbatical in Poland and gained further qualifications in Parliamentary Law (Complutense University of Madrid) and an LLM from the University of London in Legislative Drafting. In 2020, Angelo returned to Australia to work as an Assistant Parliamentary Counsel, drafting legislation. COVID-19 changed everything for so many people and for Angelo it meant focusing on his translating and a return to school (UNSW Master in T/I). Since winter 2022 he has been a full-time translator and a part-time lawyer (Family and Immigration Law in Sydney). Angelo says that his return to uni empowered him to try out getting certified in his C languages. He places a lot of importance on training in order to grow professionally. Angelo re-joined AUSIT on his return to Australia and has been a member of AUSIT’s Ethics and Professional Practice Committee since 2021. As president, Angelo’s vision is to keep on building on the achievements of AUSIT, growing in numbers and strength and changing the culture to recognise the value of practitioners to society and for their working conditions to reflect this.
