I am seeking to improve my Spanish, mainly through reading books written in Spanish to broaden my vocabulary, in the hopes that I'll be able to work from home as a translator, late at night after my girls are asleep.
I studied Spanish for a few years in school, and became a much more fluent speaker when I worked several years ago, for a year and a half, counseling Cuban refugees in a halfway house.
But since that time I haven't done much about improving my Spanish, other than sometimes having casual conversations with Spanish-speaking people in my neighborhood. I frequently get complemented on my accent and pronunciation -- but I know my vocabulary is seriously-lacking. Thus the bookreading. And I also want to listen to Spanish commentary on the radio.
I recently tried for a job that a mom in my homeschooling group has done for a year from home, giving conversational English lessons over the phone. There are even opportunities to do this late at night, due to most of the clients being in European time zones. English is the trade language when people from different European countries meet to do business together.
But by the time I got my resume together and sent it in, recruitment was done for the time-being and the supervisor had just trained a bunch of new people. But my friend says they usually do these recruitments a few times a year, and she will let me know the next time they are looking, which she thinks will probably be before the end of the year.
I'm already qualified to do the conversational English lessons -- because for this you just need to speak English well and clearly (though of course I can't assume ahead of time that I'll get this job). But my friend also mentioned they have a real need for people who can do translation.
And it occurred to me that maybe there's a real opportunity for doing translation work from home -- especially late at night which is the only time I'd be able to do it, for other companies as well. Does anyone know anything about this? I'm also wondering if I can be a translator without having a degree in this?
I studied Spanish for a few years in school, and became a much more fluent speaker when I worked several years ago, for a year and a half, counseling Cuban refugees in a halfway house.
But since that time I haven't done much about improving my Spanish, other than sometimes having casual conversations with Spanish-speaking people in my neighborhood. I frequently get complemented on my accent and pronunciation -- but I know my vocabulary is seriously-lacking. Thus the bookreading. And I also want to listen to Spanish commentary on the radio.
I recently tried for a job that a mom in my homeschooling group has done for a year from home, giving conversational English lessons over the phone. There are even opportunities to do this late at night, due to most of the clients being in European time zones. English is the trade language when people from different European countries meet to do business together.
But by the time I got my resume together and sent it in, recruitment was done for the time-being and the supervisor had just trained a bunch of new people. But my friend says they usually do these recruitments a few times a year, and she will let me know the next time they are looking, which she thinks will probably be before the end of the year.
I'm already qualified to do the conversational English lessons -- because for this you just need to speak English well and clearly (though of course I can't assume ahead of time that I'll get this job). But my friend also mentioned they have a real need for people who can do translation.
And it occurred to me that maybe there's a real opportunity for doing translation work from home -- especially late at night which is the only time I'd be able to do it, for other companies as well. Does anyone know anything about this? I'm also wondering if I can be a translator without having a degree in this?
