Speaker 1: Hi, welcome back to the 80-step guide to working as an interpreter. So we've already looked at getting qualified, choosing how, when and where you want to work and also how you can gain interpreting experience. Now if you want to actually make money from your interpreting, then the next steps that you want to undertake are to register for and search for language service providers who will be able to provide you with interpreting work. So step four is all about searching for language service providers to work with. Now just to give you a bit of background about language service providers or LSPs, they are interpreting agencies essentially that connect people who need interpreters with interpreters themselves. So normally an LSP will have a pool of registered interpreters with them in multiple languages and then when somebody needs to request an interpreter, so for example, a hospital, they will get in touch with the LSP and the LSP will send the job out to their pool of interpreters with the right language combination and then will make a booking. So LSPs actually hold many of the major interpreting contracts at the moment. So it used to be going back into the past that often interpreters were contacted directly and that still happens to a certain extent, but in many cases with public services particularly, it's the LSPs that have contracts to provide interpreters and that just makes it simpler for the clients really. All they have to do when they want an interpreter is contact the language service provider. The language service provider has already done all the relevant checks to make sure that the interpreters they work with are of a particular quality and are able to work in that specialism. So it cuts out a lot of extra work for the different public services. So the major interpreting contracts that are covered by LSPs for the most part includes hospitals, the Department of Work and Pension or job centres, social services, immigration, housing and also charities. So there are others as well, but this is an idea of the major interpreting contracts that are held by LSPs at level three. If you talk about level six, there's additional contracts for things like courts, prison, police and immigration as well. So the first thing you'll need to do is search for language service providers. Now with the internet these days, that's very, very easy indeed because you can use search engines like Google and then if you put in search terms such as language service providers near me, you'll get a lot of hits and a lot of different language services coming back for you. So you will need to experiment a bit with the searches to try and find the best combination. You can also put in interpreting agencies near me, you can put in language service providers, you can put in telephone interpreting and things like that and you'll get different companies coming up. But as I say in the UK, there are plenty of LSPs across the country and actually you may also be able to work as a telephone interpreter in the US as well. So it's sometimes worth searching for telephone interpreting agencies or over the phone interpreting as they tend to call it in the US and seeing if you can find those as well. In addition to search engines, you can also find lots of companies on LinkedIn and you can do that by following language service provider business pages, you can follow influencers and of course you can follow LearnQual as well. So if we see any adverts from language service providers, we do try and share that on our LinkedIn page. You can also find good leads to Facebook as well, there's often job adverts put out on Facebook itself, so often they will just come up in your normal feed if someone's promoting it, but also you can follow groups and you can also follow LSP business pages on Facebook as well to keep up with the latest news. And there's plenty of groups, there is actually one called something along the lines of interpreting and translation jobs, so you can get a lot of jobs from there, but joining groups from either education providers like LearnQual or groups that are dedicated to interpreting, then companies will post jobs in there as well. So once you've searched for a language service provider or more of them, you'll want to actually apply to them. So to apply to a language service provider, you can do that by responding to adverts and again like I've mentioned, these adverts sometimes appear on LinkedIn and Facebook and they're sometimes just available on the internet as well if you search for interpreting jobs, sometimes language service providers will advertise there as well. Of course, you can apply to a language service provider line, so often if you go directly to a language service provider's internet page, there will be an online application process on there, or if there's not, there's normally online instructions as to how to apply. You can of course email them direct and you can ask to apply that way, and of course, you can phone them up directly as well and find out if they've got some requirement for interpreters in your language and also start the application process. So once you've found and you want to start applying to LSPs, that's where we move into step five of our process, which is registering for work with a number of different LSPs. So one question that I often get asked by interpreters is how many LSPs should I apply to? And the thing is, if you are a freelance interpreter, there's no real limit to the number of LSPs you can actually apply to, normally they wouldn't have exclusivity terms in their contracts, so for example, they wouldn't say if you're working with us, you can't work with anyone else. That might be the case if you have a full-time interpreting job, but in most cases interpreters work as freelancers and therefore you're free to work for any LSP that you like. The main thing to say on this one is just keep persevering, particularly if you're brand new to interpreting, it may feel at first that you're not really getting anywhere, that you might have made a number of applications and nothing's actually coming off for you, but if you persevere, you'll often find that you will get success, so you need to stick at it really. Generally, we'd advise you to apply to 10 or more language service providers, it's for a number of different reasons. First of all, the more language service providers you're registered with, the better your chances of finding work. Different language service providers hold different contracts, which means they have different requirements for different languages. So sometimes you might register for one and their contracts may mean that they don't have much requirement in your language, however, if you register for a different language service provider, you might find that they've got much more requirement. So it's well worth registering for a number, which yes, does take a bit of time, but is well worth it. The more LSPs you're registered with, the more chance you've got of building up a positive reputation with those LSPs. So that's things like accepting the jobs that they send you, it's things like making sure that you don't let them down, so you're always on time to jobs and that you don't cancel jobs on them as well. And that will help to build up a positive reputation for yourself. And that will in turn mean that you often get more opportunities. Once you've started doing that, if you've got maybe two or three language service providers that you get a lot of work for, that you enjoy working for, and that enjoy working with you, that might mean that you want to ease back on some of the other LSPs that you're registered with, mainly because you don't want to be constantly turning jobs down from LSPs, because that will give you a negative reputation, and they might stop sending you work. So in that case, maybe it's better to just say, I can't take any work from you at the moment, but I'll let you know in the future if I can do that. So when it comes to registering for the LSP, they will ask you for a number of different things. The first thing they normally ask you for is qualifications. So that would include interpreting qualifications, like the one that Learn and Qual do, the Level 3 Certificate in Community Interpreting, or the Level 6 DPSI. They may also include other relevant qualifications. So that might be a qualification in translation, or it could be to do with a qualification that has a language link in some way. It really depends on the language service provider, and what kind of contracts they've got, and what kind of clients they've got. Some of them may also ask for experience. So in the last video, you'll have seen about experience, so I won't go into that now. They will generally ask for proof of idea or right to work, and in terms of proof of idea and right to work, language service providers will often ask for passports. These might need to be endorsed to show you can stay in the UK, and you've got the right to work in the UK, depending on where you're from originally. You could also include national identity cards, biometric immigration documents. Often they will ask for the original documents to be sent in. So when you send those, make sure you do that recorded, so it's tracked and they don't go missing somewhere. And they'll generally take the original copies, they'll make copies of those, they'll verify that they are the originals that they've seen, and then they'll send them back to you. And they also ask for a DBS or basic disclosure check. Now basic DBS check is a criminal record check that you can request for yourself, but your employer itself, the LSP itself, might ask you for the basic disclosure, or they might even sponsor you to do that, they might actually pay you to do the basic disclosure, depending on who they are, what their policy is, and what languages you speak. It used to be known as a CRB, so if you've got a CRB or a DBS already from another job, you should be able to reuse that. At the moment, I think the basic checks, including volunteer applications, are about £23, so it's not something that's particularly expensive, and as I say, it will help you to get registered with the LSPs. And they also ask you for professional memberships, that can sometimes help you to get jobs, and that might include memberships to the NRPSI, the National Register of Public Service Interpreters, ITI, the Institute of Translators and Interpreters, and even CIOL, which is the Chartered Institute of Linguists. So these are kinds of professional memberships, there are others out there, but these can also strengthen your application. Finally, they'll probably ask you for an up-to-date CV, just so they can store it for their records. So, as I say, once you've found the LSPs, you apply to join them, you go through the registration process, and you should be on their books and ready to receive work. Thank you very much.