 Hello! For today's video I wanted to give a brief story about me. A brief story of basically my history. I wanted to talk about where I came from and how I ended up where I am. How I ended up as a translator, as a freelance translator. Just so you can get an idea, get some context and maybe you can relate to it or maybe not but I thought it would be interesting to share that and to share who I am and where I come from. Just in case you've been watching my videos and you're wondering who is this guy talking to me through YouTube. It's pretty confusing but we'll try to take it step by step. I was born in the States. My father's American. My mother's Italian. I was born in New York. Growing up was always sort of bilingual. We moved around quite a bit while I was young and then we ended up I think when I was I guess 10 years old, no a bit earlier. Anyway we ended up in Switzerland then we ended up in the Italian part of Switzerland when I was about 12. So before that we were in the States and then the German part of Switzerland then when I was 12 I started and all during that time I went to English school, English language school. I went to American and then a British school and then but starting at 12 I went to an Italian school as well. So I was always bilingual at home and then I had a bilingual education from then until until high school. I finished off my high school so actually yeah I shouldn't say high school. The last two years of high school I did them in English. It was an international school close to where I lived. After this I went to college in the States and then I came back to the Italian part of Switzerland to work at UBS at a bank, the Swiss bank. After this I worked in market research. This was in English. Then I went to a grad school. Then I went into business with a buddy of mine. We went into commercial real estate. So this brings me up closer to the present but you'll notice something missing from all of this and that's translation. Up until now I had not worked in translation but what I had done was I now realized this pretty quickly when I was in college that anytime I wanted extra cash I found myself doing translations. At the beginning I was teaching English. In fact I was tutoring Italian. I was teaching English earlier and then I was tutoring Italian in college and I was doing this for money. But later I started doing translations just because I found that I was pretty good at them. At the beginning I was helping out friends and then friends of friends both in college. Then later when I was working. Then later when I was in grad school definitely because I needed a lot of money then. Even later because I was going into business with myself. With me and my buddy like my friend we were just trying to set up a business so we weren't making much. Definitely not at the beginning. I realized hey I always kind of revert back to translation and every time I need extra money why not try to make this how I make my money. And then so I decided to take it more seriously and try to enter the translation world and realized how little I actually knew. This is where I picked up all this stuff that I've been talking about in my videos basically. So a lot of the entrepreneurial stuff has started already when I went into business with my friend. There I got I guess the entrepreneurial aspect but everything dealing with translation per se has been since then. I grew up bilingual but not as a translator. And anyone who's a translator can tell you there's a big difference between being bilingual and a translator. Now I did have experience translating because I had done it for friends and friends of friends like I said and some other people I'd gotten paid and what not back in school. But it was only later that I really kind of learned and taught myself how to be a real translator. There were a lot of missteps that I took a lot of wrong steps a lot of wrong turns which is actually why I make these videos and also why I created my course and wrote my book is because it seemed ridiculous that there wasn't something out there teaching people how to do this stuff right. Because when you're a freelance translator it's very different from being a translator in a firm and it's very different from well I mean pretty much anything else out there right because you are a freelancer but your freelancer dealing with two different languages which very often means two different countries. I basically taught myself so I don't have a degree in translation. You don't need a degree in translation. I'm sure it helps for a lot of the technical stuff that I had to figure out on my own. But then again I concentrate on certain aspects of translation that I know. I worked in finance I worked in a bank when I was there I had to deal with all the translating back and forth because where I was everyone spoke Italian and I was one of the only ones who spoke English the only one who spoke fluently. So it was up to me to translate all our financial statements and do everything deal with the clients who spoke English and all that good stuff. So I did have a lot of experience in that context and I was able to transpose this into translation. However there was a lot that I still had to learn but most of what I had to learn I found at that point was how to be a freelance translator rather than working at a firm. How to get business for myself. How to make sure I maintain a certain standard of translation and what that standard should be and how to maintain it all this stuff which was all new to me. That's how I started you know I started translating and I definitely had some ups and downs some fits and starts because you know I made some mistakes I also didn't know what I was doing so I didn't know how to chase new translations new yeah new business new new clients and stuff like that and I had to learn I'm still learning you know and and that's how it goes. Where I am now is I am a translator but I've also been expanding and trying to work with other translators to set up this agency and that's kind of what I'm trying to grow more while still being a translator. I'm figuring that out as I go along as well. I was thinking of doing some videos about that but I feel like I'm I mean actually it might be interesting just to catalog my journey about that but I feel like I'm still learning so I don't really know what to say or what advice to give for that. But for translation you know now it's been quite a few years that I've been doing it so now I'm I'm I'm showing my age because I'm pretty old I think I'm older than I look anyway I've been translating over 10 years now and you know so I kind of know the ropes especially for the types of translations that I'm doing. So anyway that's pretty much it that's my journey and that's how I came from being someone who didn't do translations to someone who does do translations. Once again my background was growing up bilingual I realized not all of you have that many of you studied a language that doesn't change much in fact it helps a lot with the theory if you if you had to study a new language within the context of the language you know before because then you can relate one language to the other. As you can see I started pretty late in my translation career and also I didn't have a guide or anyone helping me out when I started which is how most translators have been most freelance translators I should say. It is possible you can't figure figure it out I do think these videos I'm doing I I mean I make them to help you so I do hope they help you know the main thing is it was so frustrating doing something completely wrong and realizing wait why don't we all know this is wrong like why isn't anyone telling us that this is wrong because someone should be so I started making these videos and and doing all the other stuff you know creating the course and everything because I realized that I took so many false steps that there should be kind of a catalog of the correct steps to take. Obviously you can't guarantee success by taking this and this step but there are many steps that are quite obviously should be taking and other steps that are pretty useless and you should be avoiding. Hopefully you found it interesting that's my background and hopefully it gives you a bit more context so you know you get to know me a bit better. That's it for now I'll talk to you in the next video obviously most videos I try to teach something or share what I've learned some tips and tricks and tidbits about freelancing or freelance translation more specifically and so please subscribe if you want more of that and I'll talk to you in the next video thanks. Bye.