Speaker 1: Hello fellow translators. So today's video is going to be one to use for reference. And I'm going to send people to this video because I get a lot of the same questions, especially by people who are first starting out. So if you're first starting out, if you're a translator who's first starting out, check out this video. If this video doesn't answer your questions, I've literally got more than a hundred other videos on this channel which, so you do a search on this channel for whatever your question is. Chances are I answer it there. If you still can't answer your question, you can't find an answer to your question, then don't forget that I have a course. It's available in the description below that handles everything from A to Z in terms of getting started as a freelance translator and earning a living from me and making a career out of it. But let's get to the questions that I receive most often. I might do a part two to this, I'll see. But let's get to the questions that I get most often from beginning, from translators who are just beginning, freelance translators who are just starting out. So first thing, do you need a degree to become a translator? To become a freelance translator? No, you don't. If you have one, it doesn't hurt very often, but you absolutely don't need one. You learn a lot of stuff, but it's mostly theory, and if you want to get used to freelance translation, especially the freelance part, then you really, it's better to get the experience itself rather than the degree. Anyway, the short answer is no, you don't need one, so don't worry if you don't have one. How do you start? You start, the first step I usually say is to sign up on Proz.com. Go to Proz.com, sign up there, and that should be your first step in starting. It's proz.com. Another website is translatorscafe.com if you want. You can try upwork.com as well, but they usually pay a lot less. I would say proz.com, translatorscafe.com. Go there, sign up, that should be your first step. And follow this channel for more videos about freelance translation so you get a better feel, obviously. How do you find clients? So once again, on proz.com, and that's the best place to find clients. So if you're looking for a job, if you're starting out as a freelance translator, you're going to be targeting translation agencies rather than end clients. And so you go to proz.com, you go to translatorscafe.com. You can also just email or you can find the websites of translation agencies. They usually have a form to fill out. And so yeah, that's where you should go. By the way, when you go to proz.com and also translatorscafe.com, you can fill in your language combination and also your specialization, and jobs will come to you. So you don't actually have to go there and find the jobs yourself, but you can get job alerts. So anytime a job in your language combination pops up, it'll pop up. You'll be sent an email and you can apply to each job individually, which makes it a lot easier. Next, how do I get experience? You get experience by translating. Translate a website. And yeah, so translate a website. Yeah, if you want to translate for free, find a website that's been translated, translate yourself, compare your translation to the translation that's been done. It's pretty simple. There are a bunch of ways to do this. I also, if you want to get experience that you can then use in your portfolio, stuff like that, I have another video. You can search for it where I talk about where you can perform free translations. If you search for free translations in this channel, it'll probably pop up. It's places where you can volunteer, like Translators Without Borders, TED Talks, et cetera. And anyway, I have a list in that video. So feel free to check that out. Next thing, do I need a website? No, you do not need a website. In fact, a website costs quite a bit. If you want to get a website further down the line, that's great. But at the beginning, you'll need a profile page, where people can find your information online. But pros.com is great for that, or LinkedIn, or what have you. Pick one, make sure your profile looks good on that, then you don't need to pay for a website. Am I ready to be a freelance translator? And then people say, I'm bilingual, or I learned this language, or something. Am I ready to be a freelance translator? Question is, I don't, I mean, the answer is, I don't know. It depends on you. Along the lines of translating a website, just finding a website to translate, I was thinking recently how Benjamin Franklin, in order to become a better writer, he would find writing that he liked, he'd read it through, and then he'd put it away and try to rewrite the same thing himself. And he would compare what he wrote to what was written before, and you know, try to see how his writing compared to the writing that was done, and what he needs to work on more, and what he does well, et cetera, et cetera. By the same token, that's exactly what you can do. Find a website that's already been translated, translate it yourself. Compare your translation to the translation that's already been done, and that'll give you a good feeling for how good you are, what you need to work on, et cetera, et cetera. And yeah, that's pretty much what I've written there. So these are just short, quick answers. Usually these are the first questions that pop up when people are first starting out. And so I just wanted to give short, quick answers, rapid fire response answers to these questions to hopefully help you out. If there are any other questions, you know, for freelance translators first starting out, then maybe I'll do a part two video. But for now, this is a good thing to keep as reference, so you can check it out in case you have any questions about freelance translation when you're first starting out. And hopefully this helps you out. So that's pretty much it. I'll talk to you next time. Okay, thanks. Bye. Oh, by the way, I should also mention, pretty much every single point that I mentioned here, I do have another video where I discuss it a bit more in detail, like whether you need a degree or stuff like that. I just didn't want to go too much into detail here and kind of just keep it rapid. But you can get more in-depth responses if you search through this. channel. Okay, thanks. Bye.

Speaker 2: Thank you for watching. I hope you enjoyed this video. If you did, make sure to like, comment, and subscribe. And I'll see you in the next video. Take care.