Rafael has been a translator for more than 45 years, and during the first years of his career he worked mainly as a freelance French-Spanish translator for editorial houses and highly ranked cultural magazines. After these early years, he went into the open professional field and started doing translations for government bodies, translation agencies, academic institutions, and other similar entities. This new work experience widened his fields of specialty, and brought him into making use of all his linguistic capacity, translating from English, and from Spanish and English into French. He has also translated a certain number of documents into English, but even though he manages to do this correctly, it is not his first choice.

Rafael has translated several books for the most renowned editorial houses in Mexico, and some other abroad, a significant number of articles for key magazines (Plural Vuelta, and Letras Libres, all edited by the Noble Prize poet Octavio Paz, Revista de la Universidad, and many more, and a still more important number of documents for academic institutions, governmental bodies, international organizations and private companies. As an example, in 2012 only, he translated 1M words for the Mexican Statistics Agency.

Rafael has mainly translated large UN System large documents in this pair, as well as a number of institutional documents for international organizations and some local universities.

Rafael has been all his life a communication agent between his two native languages, French and Spanish. He has translated a significant number of documents in both directions, including books, articles, academic papers and many more.
He has also been a promoter of SP>FR publications and translations, bilingual editions, and cultural cooperation projects.

Rafael has translated numerous documents in this pair, including (mostly) UN documents, such as executive summaries, country reports, draft declarations, conference reports, etc. from many of the various UN agencies. He has also translated a certain number of technical documents, such as Intercom regulations, mines and metals white papers, NGOs' baseline documents, etc.

Rafael has worked extensively for governmental bodies and national institutions, as well as a number of NGOs in Mexico and Canada, including the Mexican ministries of Foreign Affairs, Economy, Education, Transport and Telecommunications, Health, the President's Office, Canadian Heritage, La Ville de Montréal, Canadian Ministry of Environment, among others. He has translated large numbers of documents pertaining to these various governmental areas for more than 10 years.

Rafael has translated numerous articles for the best renowned magazines and academic publications in Mexico and abroad. In particular he wrote and translated for Plural and Vuelta magazines, both under the direction of the Nobel prize winner poet Octavio Paz, as well as for magazines such as Revista de la Universidad de México, Arts in America, Les Cahiers du Chemin (Gallimard), among many others.

Rafael has translated extensively for international organisations, such as the UN, UNESCO, OAS, UNCAC, UN-Women, ICMM, World Bank, OECD, etc.
Most of the documents translated in this field were white papers, but there also country reports, legislation projects, baseline documents, executive summaries, and conference reports or key conference papers, among others.

Rafael has translated more than 28 books for the best renowned editorial houses, in fields including fiction, philosophy, social sciences, education, poetry, drama, history, art, and many others. He has been recognized for the quality of his translations and obtained in two occasions the National Council of the Arts' Grant for Literary translation.