 Hello everyone, so today I'm actually going to do a I feel like I look different on this thing. Oh, I think my Sees a bit higher than normal. Anyway, whatever today. Sorry today. I'm going to Do a Q&A session because I've received quite a few questions recently in the comments and sometimes I'm not very good at keeping up with all of them and so anyway, I just wanted to do a video where I Talk about a couple of those questions. They're just a couple and I just want to address them here Because they might be interesting to all of you out there. So, yeah, let's start it off right away The first question I have is from Konstantin Martinov Martinov, I don't know. He says hi, I like your videos can ask you a question What kind of skill do you advise to master in order to become location independent? I only do transcription videos and audios into text and that's it I tried to translate some text. Sometimes it was okay. Sometimes I had bad feedback So my advice and actually and I gave this to him But I feel like he's asking two different things first of all He's asking if he should do this transcription or if he should do just text translation and my reply would be Obviously transcription is working a lot better for him than just translation. So he should definitely stick stick to transcription I mean, he might have been asking because I I do text and I've mentioned a couple times I don't do transcription and so maybe that's why he was wondering if it's better to do One rather than the other But whatever works best for you is what you should be doing So if you if you're doing written translation and that works best for you do that if you're doing transcription You have more success with that absolutely do that Don't in fact even when you're starting out if you find what works best for you go all in on that Forget the other stuff. Don't try to hedge your bets at the beginning, you know with this set and the other No, go all in for in this case in Konstantin's case it will be transcription go into transcription and You know the videos and audios into text and if that's what's working then do that and In your profile and when you're applying for jobs and everything That's what you're looking for because once you find something that works Then you should go all into that and just keep trying to repeat that repeat that repeat that if he's having issue with Just the text translations then don't don't bother with this, you know This is the work, you know, what's different between the working world in school is in school if you're bad at French But good at math you should study more French and a bit less math so you can get it better But in the real world if you're good at math and bad at French Concentrate on math, you know, and don't try a career in French And so in the same sense here, I would say if you're good at something concentrate on that Whatever you're good at whatever you like doing whatever earns you more money and you can earn a living from That's what you should be doing to be location-dependent with one caveat which I will I will get to now and because All of this is true, but he asks What do I need to master in order to become location-independent? And this was a second part of the question that I mentioned Luckily what he's good at is transcription and audio which transcription videos and audio into text which can definitely be done online In fact, it's almost always done online. So that's great If you want to be location-independent though, you need to find something that you can do while being location-independent This is a big reason by the way, why I'm not an interpreter I'm also not an interpreter because I'll be a very very bad interpreter But a big reason is because I like being location-independent if you're an interpreter You're not you have to go to certain locations and interpret for them Whether it be the courthouse or this city hall meeting or that business meeting or whatever it might be and look I know a lot of interpreters and they love that They love the fact that a client will fly them out to DC and to here and to there and they can interpret and You know, it's a it's a lifestyle and they love it So it really depends on you by the way nowadays a lot of interpreting can be done online as well So you can be location-independent for doing quite a bit of interpreting I think it's a lot harder to start your career in that if you refuse to Go meet clients face-to-face, but it can be done and in fact a lot more things can be done online Over the phone and in a location-independent manner So if if what you love if what earns you money and if what you want to do seems like something you cannot do online Do some research into it. Maybe there's a way that you can I'm not saying there definitely is but there might be But if you want to be location-independent Find out what you're good at if it's already something you can do online Then you're golden put all your eggs in that basket at least in the beginning keep trying to work on that only and But if you if what you like isn't something you can do remotely then I would do research Because maybe there is a way to do remotely. Look a lot of things are being done remotely now from lawyers to Doctors I was recently talking to a doctor and he was saying how how much they're doing remotely had you know There'll be a town in Texas where they need something done And they'll hook up to a doctor in LA or Chicago and who even during surgery Will be giving advice or saying do this or that a giving diagnosis whatever and so it yeah It's very incredible actually and a lot of people are doing that with He he was talking to me a lot about I was enthralled by it and he said a lot of people they're general practitioner It'll just be they'll talk to someone over Skype depending on their need obviously if it's just Common cold or something like that then fine But if they have something a bit more complicated and they're living somewhere rural or somewhere where they don't have Access to very good doctors or doctors with a specialty they need they can do it all remotely so many things can be done remotely So do some research into that if that's something you're interested in Okay, that's it for that question the next question. We see Maria s asks I know your channel is more about freelancing, but could you also do a video about learning Chinese? I will really appreciate it. I'm also learning Chinese at the moment. So this is Actually something I contemplated doing but Unfortunate so I have done a video on how I learned in general so a lot of them In fact, all of that would apply to learning Chinese as well The thing with Chinese is that it's very different from many other languages aside from learning all those weird characters and the tones and And the and a different structure it also I mean the characters themselves as you know are not an alphabet. It's the only language being used now that still uses bonafide hieroglyphics to to say something and so that makes it very different you don't learn an alphabet and then from there on So like Korean I learned the alphabet or you know the Korean symbols and I can read them So many times I'll I can I can read anything fine, you know, and that's no problem But many times I need to figure out and try to understand what I'm reading. That's not how it works with Chinese with Chinese You need to learn both like because all they're all different characters. And so you need to learn how to read it Pretty much from scratch for every single character and also what it means anyway, it's just a different way to to go about it and So one of the things that I try to do is I have my here just a second I'm gonna get my some of my flashcards Okay, so here are my flashcards my flashcards. I usually I don't know if you can see I have the I write The character and I write the tone on top. This is just so I can it just helps me because Now when I look at characters, obviously, I don't know the tone just off the top of my head But at least if I write it with that it kind of comes second nature and I can think like me She and I and I kind of see the tone on top of it Anyway, so that's the way I do it then on the other side I I write the the pronunciation in pinyin doing and then the What it means under it so I can also cover it this way or that way However, it might be It's I mean, yeah, and so that's how I'll do it Please excuse my very bad handwriting of writing these characters, but this is the way that works for me Another way can work for someone else Otherwise all the standard things apply Still if you if you want to speak more find other people to speak with I've mentioned these other things before speaking to yourself Or if you find people over skype language exchange all that good stuff I would definitely do it what I love about Chinese though and what makes it different is every learning the language is a lesson in etymology and so and Whenever you're learning a new character say you're learning well each character has two different parts or many characters Anyway, it can get as complicated as you want But many times you'll see the radical here Which is this is the radical for hand and then you find the other part which usually has something to do with the pronunciation and in fact this radical for hand and then down and that's how it's pronounced and and it means to block and So anyway, it makes sense Very often if you learn the etymology and to me it helps a lot in learning the actual character so Those are the main things that I think are different in Chinese as Compared to other languages so you have the tones and I know you have other languages with tones but for me it's the first language I was learning with tones and you have the characters rather than the alphabet which Makes it hard, but once again I tried to get into the etymology bit and I have a couple books here that talk only about the etymology about Chinese characters and the history of it and all that in fact there's one that I recommend just a second I'm gonna get it Sorry, so these are some of the books. I have this is probably the best one out there It's called China Empire of Symbols by Cecilia Lindquist It was actually originally written in Swedish and then translated into English, but it's great. It has All the history. I mean it is heavy, but it goes through the history of all these characters and how they developed from the From the Oracle bones to the Joe period and to modern times and I like it a lot The Chinese language is a shorter one and I found it also extremely helpful And it goes through a bunch of the characters at least it again it has them all listed and it goes through some of the history and and how they How it evolved and why things are the way they are like why things like Beijing Was peaking and how that changed and all that. I mean, I guess most of them cover that there's some others I want depending on your level My level is not that good, but This was one that I found quite helpful. It is a Book as you can see it's in Chinese. This is written in Traditional Chinese, but it talks about again. It talks about the characters. It's written for school kids I'm pretty sure. I mean, I know it's written for school kids, but it helps someone like me who's learning the characters and and It's interesting that you can go through all these things and try to see where the root and where the character originally comes from and how it evolved so Yeah, in terms of just pure Chinese I think that at least is what helped me and Otherwise, yeah, they're the things that are for standard language Decide if you're learning reading and writing or speaking and listening and if you want to concentrate on one or the other and That depends on what you want to get out of the language and then you can concentrate on that Obviously, you need to learn a bit of everything to be able to proceed You can't just ignore the character. It's just because you want to speak in Chinese, but it'll give you a direction That's better and but that's the same for all languages So I won't get into that too much and I'll try to move on because it's already taken way longer than I wanted it to I'll do one more. This question is by Daniel Villareal Who who I've talked to quite a few other times. I know he also sorry about that I know he also takes my course and And yeah, we've better and he's also I know he's also read my book because he wrote Book review. Thank you once again Daniel for the book review so he wrote Fantastic video. Thank you for posting a Robert a quick question Do you know of citizens and residents of all countries are eligible for Upwork greetings from Taipei, Taiwan? So actually I looked it up if any anyone from any country can apply for Upwork this was a comment on my video of how to sign up for Upwork and so that's why he was talking about Upwork and There are some restrictions. I looked it up. So Businesses or individuals in the following countries are not permitted to register for a counselor utilize our platform Iran, North Korea, Syria Crimea Cuba individual nationals of Cuba that kind of Surprised me any other countries restricted by law this change of occasionally This is in compliance with federal law. This means US federal law Upwork is based out of the US And so that's why it'll depend on that but aside from that every other country can Apply if you're in any other country, you can Apply for and be a freelancer on Upwork and you can sign up for it So there are no restrictions in that sense If you want to see how to apply for Upwork, then if you search for my videos, I'll link to it down below I've made a video of how to sign up for Upwork and where I go through it and actually sign up so you can Follow along so yeah, please sign up because it's a great place to do any type of freelancing for freelance Translation as well. I think pros is a better website, but you do have to pay for pros and you don't for Upwork So so yeah, feel free to check it out. Anyway, that's it for now I've gone on long enough with all this video and but hopefully you found it somewhat useful and Thank you so much for watching my video Please don't forget to click like if you do because this helps me with future videos because I know what works And what doesn't don't forget to subscribe if you haven't and you can get more videos about being a freelancer being a Freelance translator directly to you. Also right next to subscribe if you click on the bell button Then you'll be notified when there's a new video You don't have to check to see if there's a new video or not and wonder if maybe you missed something along the way Also, I offer certain services as in looking over your resume looking over your profile page or your website stuff like that I also offer one-on-one consulting services. You can find all that information down in the description below and Otherwise, I'll see you in the next video. Thanks. Bye You