Speakers per Country

A widely accepted "best practice" in our industry is for Portuguese translators and interpreters to work only into their native language: Portuguese. Some companies often assume that if you can translate from a language, you can also translate into it. Bolstered by unwarranted confidence, some translators make the same assumption without ever putting it to the test.

The Translation Company firmly believes that a best practice is to have a qualified native speaker edit our work. Therefore, we have Portuguese translators in our team for different target-countries:

• Portuguese in Asia
• Portugese in Africa
• Portuguese in Brazil & South America

We believe that a Portuguese translator should work in a single language pair, and most of our translators should work in a few specialties. Camila Saunier, market manager and also a career Portuguese translator, explains that “specialty brings competence and confidence” – referring to her legal translation and language interpretation jobs, and the continuous demand from a few selected clients for her services.

Portuguese language territories (source Wikipedia)
Country/Region	Speakers (native)	Total speakers	Population (2005)
Africa
Angola	60%	80%	11,190,786
Cape Verde	ND	ND	418,224
Mozambique	6.5%	40%	19,406,703
So Tomé and Príncipe	50%	95%	187,410
Equatorial Guinea	-	-	1,014,999
not official:
Namibia	20%	20%	2,030,692
South Africa	2%	2%	44,344,136
Asia
East Timor	ND	20%	1,040,880
Macao S.A.R., China	5%	7%	449,198
not official:
Daman, India	10%	10%	113,949
Goa, India[1]	4%	4%	1,400,000
Europe
Portugal	100%	100%	10,566,212
not official:
Luxembourg³	14%	14%	468,571
Andorra	4-13%	4-13%	70,549
Spain	2%	4%	44,187,127
France	2%	2%	60,656,178
Germany	2%	2%	82,689,000
Switzerland	2%	2%	7,489,370
The Americas
Brazil	99%	100%	186,112,794
not official:
Paraguay	7%	7%	6,347,884
Bermuda	4%	4%	65,365
Venezuela	1-2%	1-2%	25,375,281
Canada	1-2%	1-2%	32,805,041