Three Days as the Interpreter at Afiliados Brasil: How a US Founder Worked a Room That Ran in Portuguese

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Some jobs you can describe in a sentence. This one is better told the way it actually happened — hour by hour, over three days, on the floor of the biggest affiliate marketing event in Latin America.

The short version: David Stodolak — a US founder, host of The LFG Show, CEO of Connection Holdings, a name you know if you work in lead generation — flew into São Paulo for Afiliados Brasil and needed an interpreter at Afiliados Brasil who could keep up with three days of relentless, high-speed networking in a language he does not speak. We gave him two. Here is how the days went.

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The problem, discovered at the door

David did not fly to Brazil for the panels. He flew for the people.

If you know Afiliados Brasil, you know why. Running since 2013 at the Frei Caneca Convention Center, it is the largest affiliate marketing event in Latin America — advertisers, affiliates, traffic buyers and founders packed into one building, which is the entire point. It is also a magnet for the Brazilian market specifically, and São Paulo is the top investment destination in Latin America according to the state agency InvesteSP. For an American founder, that is a room full of exactly the right people.

And that room runs in Portuguese. Not the odd conversation — the default. The introductions, the small talk, the "so what do you do," the pivot from pleasantry to partnership. A keynote, you can catch from a recap later. A handshake in the coffee line does not come with subtitles. That is the gap David walked in with, and the reason we were there before he arrived.

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Day one: learning the founder, not just the language

The first day of a networking event is not about volume. It is about calibration.

Our two interpreters — both fluent in English, Portuguese and Spanish — spent the opening hours learning how David moves. How fast he talks. When he wants a word-for-word render and when he wants the gist so he can keep momentum. Which verticals he is hunting for, so that when someone relevant appears, the introduction lands with the right emphasis instead of a flat translation. This is the part an app can never do: an interpreter who has tuned to you by lunchtime is a different tool than one reading a script.

By the afternoon, the rhythm was set. David would spot someone, our interpreter would open the conversation, and within seconds it was just two founders talking — the language layer dissolved into the background, which is exactly where it belongs. The mode for this is not a booth and headsets; it is accompanying interpretation, on foot, whispered and consecutive, moving with him through the floor.

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Day two: one interpreter would not have been enough

The middle day is the long one, and it is where the decision to send two professionals earned itself.

A networking floor has no natural breaks. Conversations overlap, one introduction rolls into the next, and the event runs from the morning coffee straight through to the evening. A single interpreter — perfect for a two-hour meeting with a clear start and stop — cannot stay sharp across all of that, and the moment their energy dips, so does the warmth of every conversation they are bridging. At a networking event, that warmth is not a nice-to-have. It is the product.

With two, the coverage never dropped. One could reset while the other worked; David never once had to pause his day because his interpreter needed to. It meant he could do the thing he flew in to do — meet as many of the right people as the floor could offer — at full speed, from open to close, for the whole middle stretch of the event where the real depth of networking happens.

Planning a multi-day event? Ask about a team →

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Day two, after hours: the part that was not only Brazilian

Here is the detail that made the trilingual choice matter, and it showed up most in the evenings.

Afiliados Brasil is the biggest affiliate event in Latin America, not only Brazil — which means the floor and the after-hours events are full of Spanish-speaking attendees from across the region, shoulder to shoulder with the Portuguese-speaking hosts. A person walks up; they might be from São Paulo, they might be from Buenos Aires or Bogotá. An interpreter who covers English, Portuguese and Spanish bridges either one without missing a beat. For a founder whose whole goal is to meet people, that flexibility is the difference between a promising contact made and a promising contact politely skipped because the language did not line up. Over the evenings, that added up to a lot of conversations that otherwise would not have happened.

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Day three: when the language has already disappeared

By the last day, the interpreters were not translating a stranger's words. They were finishing David's sentences.

That is what preparation and continuity buy you. The professionals knew his pitch, his verticals, the shorthand he had used all week, the people he had already met and wanted to circle back to. The follow-up conversations — the ones that actually turn an event into revenue — happened with all of that context already loaded. Nobody was starting cold. It is the same principle behind our business interpreter in São Paulo service: the interpreter is not a utility you plug in, but someone who, by the end, represents you almost as well as you represent yourself.

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What we took from it

We will say plainly why this write-up exists: the feedback David gave us was extraordinary, and we are proud of it.

But the part we are most proud of is the part that is hardest to see. For three days, the language stopped being a problem David had to manage and went back to being invisible — which is the entire job of a good interpreter. He came to build relationships in a market that runs in a language he does not speak, and he left having built them. That does not happen by accident. We pay our interpreters properly and brief them thoroughly, because at a networking event the interpreter is your first impression on every new contact, and a well-prepared, well-treated professional makes that impression a good one. Feedback like his is how we know the approach works.

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If you are the foreigner flying into São Paulo

Every year, São Paulo fills with people in exactly David's position — flying in for a conference that runs in a language they do not speak, hoping the most valuable part of the trip does not get lost in translation.

It does not have to. Tell us the event and your goals, and we will send you interpreter profiles — photo, experience, voice sample — so you choose your own before you fly. We brief them on what you are there to do, we scale from one professional for a day to a team across a multi-day event, and because we are based in Brazil, you are not paying to fly anyone in. Whether it is Afiliados Brasil, a tech summit, a finance forum or a trade fair, the service is the same: you, in every conversation that counts.

See the profiles and request an interpreter for your São Paulo event →

Or reach us on WhatsApp +55 (61) 99803-8363 — Monday to Saturday, 8am to 6pm (São Paulo time) — or write to oi@traduzme.com.br.

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