I’m Rafael Matias, a Brazilian living abroad since 2018. I see myself as a dedicated person who puts a lot of value on family, friends, and work.

I love my profession as it combines two passions of mine: games and languages, so work doesn’t feel too much like “work” to me. Since I was 3 and my brother got his first Super Nintendo (SNES), a passion for games was planted in me, and it has grown since then. With the words game localization far away from Brazil at that time, playing games in English was our only choice. As a silver lining, that forced me to build my foundations of the Anglo tongue when I was still a little child.

After having completed my Business/Foreign Trade degree in 2015 and working in the field for 4 years, I spent all my savings and decided that my life needed a change. In 2018, I moved to Ireland for an Exchange program to improve my English, work in a different country, and fulfil my childhood dream of living abroad. In those years, I heard about game localization for the first time, and that immediately caught my attention.

With a lot of study and preparation, I officially became a translator in 2019, just before the pandemic. Things have gone progressively well since then, with highlights on more than three million words translated and more than a hundred games with my mark on them (even if some insist on not crediting us).

In 2026, I founded my own studio called Iguana Localize. The studio is focused on providing services to indie developers and mid-sized publishers, as I believe the industry’s future is indie games.

I’m married to a gorgeous Mexican woman whom I have the pleasure of calling the mother of our sweet Emma and Gaia, two beautiful Italian children who have a Mexican mom, a Brazilian dad, and the best laughter in the world.