Writing for a Living
“Your cousin is a doctor, and just look at how nice her life is! She has a big house, sends her kids to the best school in the city, and can afford nice vacations. You can’t do that if you’re a writer.”
“Your cousin is a doctor, and just look at how nice her life is! She has a big house, sends her kids to the best school in the city, and can afford nice vacations. You can’t do that if you’re a writer.”
It’s not fair, but it’s reality: to excel in many workplaces, you need to have some command of English. Most young professionals aren’t starting from scratch, given that some amount of English education is now required in most parts of the world. Still, maybe you slept through class, or perhaps it has been so long since you’ve used or studied it that you’ve lost much of your former prowess in the language. When quizzed, all you can come up with are simple verbs like “love,” “eat,” and “drink,” and basic nouns like “tacos” and “coffee” (if so, you picked good words to remember).
Your business is like your child—well, not quite as important, but there are definite parallels. After you conceive an idea, you spend months nurturing it, and then introduce it to the world. Time and money are poured into helping it grow and thrive, all in the hopes that one day it will be strong enough to function without constant intervention on your part. Perhaps, then, it’s no surprise that many aspiring entrepreneurs are hesitant to delegate responsibilities to those outside of their immediate work circles.
Every journalist or writer who isn’t living in a bubble has inevitably come across a foreign name for a person, place, food, custom, or cultural concept that must be translated or transliterated into the target language. Often, it’s difficult to decide whether to leave the word in its source language and/or script, to transliterate it to fit (as closely as possible) the phonemes and letters of the target language and its script, or to translate it. Here’s an informal guide to the ins and outs of each of these methods.
No list of “fun English words” would be complete without a history lesson. Modern English is a mosaic, having absorbed linguistic elements from several different sources over the course of hundreds of years.
“Cantonese is the hardest language to learn—it has nine tones!”
“Arabic has the most complex grammar of all.”
With increasing globalization and inextricably linked economies, cross-lingual communication has become a ubiquitous part of most companies’ daily operations. Statistics support this conclusion. The U.S. Department of Labor projects that between 2016 to 2026, the rate of employment for interpreters and translators will jump by a staggering 18%.
Millenials are a force to be reckoned with. They have a reputation for being movers and shakers who don’t always comply with the norm. Most millennials seek adventure and thrive in leadership positions. To be blunt, millennials like to live life on their own terms.
With thousands upon thousands of brands trying to reach an audience on a daily basis, how do you choose the one that really speaks to you? Is it based on their products? The tone of voice they use and their overall branding? Their product descriptions? Is it their look? Or, is it based solely on your needs?
Living the laptop lifestyle isn’t as easy as it seems. Freelance jobs aren’t just one long adventure where you can travel the world with no worries. It’s time-consuming. Even though you may not need to show up to an office every day, it’s still a job.