Sara Maria Hasbun: From Translator to Business Owner with 3000+ freelancers
Kris Broholm talks with Sara Maria Hasbun, founder of Meridian Linguistics. She shares her journey from initially struggling with language learning to building a company that employs over 3,000 freelance translators. The discussion covers her business's growth and strategies for effective language acquisition.
February 7, 2019 · 59 min
Guest
Sara Maria Hasbun
What You'll Hear
- 1 Welcome & Meet Sarah Maria Hasben
- 2 Sarah's Personal Language Learning Journey
- 3 Building a Global Translation Company
- 4 How to Become a Freelance Translator
- 5 Digital Nomad Life: Travel, Taxes & Work
- 6 Effective Independent Language Learning Strategies
- 7 Maximize Your Tutoring Sessions
- 8 Connect with Sarah & Meridian Linguistics
Links Mentioned
Questions Covered in the Show
What is Meridian Linguistics?- 2m
How did Sarah Maria Hasben begin her language learning journey?- 4m
Is natural talent required to learn a foreign language?- 10m
What qualifications or steps are needed to become a freelance translator?- 22m
Will machine translation replace human translators?- 27m
What are effective methods for independent language study, particularly using online tools and tutors?- 35m
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Hey everyone, and welcome back to Actual Fluency. This is episode 144. I'm really happy to have you here. Today, I have a special episode with special guest Sarah Maria Hasben, who's the founder of Meridian Linguistics, which is a linguistics consulting company, which employs over 3,000 freelance translators, and they provide translation services to law firms and businesses worldwide. She's also started a vlog called MissLinguistic, where she documents her adventures in language learning, and she has tips and tricks on how to learn languages more efficiently. And that's kind of what we talk about in the episode as well. We get her story of how she started this big company, or what it eventually became a big company, uh hiring all these freelance translators and how she basically built the business for herself in languages with her passion. Very interesting episode, and I hope you enjoy it.
Sarah, welcome to the show. And thank you so much for making it here last minute. I really appreciate it. Do you want to give the listeners a quick introduction to who you are, where you're from, and what you've been doing in language learning so far?
Sure. Um, first of all, thanks for having me. Um, well, I am a linguist. I uh trained in understanding the structure of languages and how languages work in the brain. And I then founded and became the managing director of a linguistic consulting company called Meridian Linguistics. So we provide um linguistic consulting, essentially we solve language problems for businesses. And uh a big bulk of that is doing translation. We have about 3,000 freelance translators working for us all over the world.
And on the side of that, I have recently started dipping my toes into content creation. Um, I'm obviously obsessed with learning languages and I really wanted to start putting out content that would help other people learn languages and particularly help them to understand that you don't need to be any kind of genius or any kind of savant to learn languages, that I really struggled in the beginning with learning languages until I came up with a few good strategies, and a few good tools, a few good tips. Um, and I just want to share that those with everyone that I can.
Fantastic. And how did it all start? Like, take us back to your first multilingual moment, as it were.
Sure. Um, well, I'm American, and unfortunately, like most Americans, I grew up pretty monolingual, um, an English speaker. My father is from El Salvador, so his first language is Spanish, but we only spoke English in the home. Um, so I didn't start learning Spanish until about high school. And I really struggled with it. It was embarrassing because I I look Latina, you know, I look Hispanic, and everyone expected big things from me. And uh, it was I really, really struggled, and I couldn't understand why I couldn't wrap my brain around these conjugations. I didn't understand why we had to conjugate them in the first place. Um, I would take my homework to my dad every day and ask him why, you know, but why? And he would say, "That's just how it is."
And I really struggled, and I don't know how this possibly happened, but inexplicably, despite the fact that I had no talent in learning languages, I became really fascinated in them. And I guess part of that is because so many of my friends, I grew up in San Francisco, which is a very, the town full of immigrants. So many of my friends spoke other languages with their parents, and to me, it was just so cool that they had this secret code that they could use. And I didn't understand why I didn't. And so, even though I didn't show any particular aptitude in the beginning, I was still really interested in doing it. So I kept, you know, knocking my head against the wall trying to learn Spanish.
I ended up signing up for French because I thought, well, maybe I'll have better luck with a language that I'm actually interested in because Spanish I was really learning for heritage reasons, um because people expected me to speak Spanish, but French I always just loved. I just loved the sound of it, I loved the literature that came with it. And so I started working on French too. And pretty much French was easier than Spanish because I'd had a heads up to the romance languages with Spanish, but I was still not making very much progress.
And it wasn't really until I finally signed up for an immersion situation, basically, I went to teach English in Spain for the summer, um as sort of my last ditch, you know, if this doesn't work, then nothing else will. And luckily it did work. I was living with a family that didn't speak any English. Um they were super patient with me. And by the end of my three months, I had finally gotten to a point where I couldn't believe it, but I was having fluent conversations in Spanish.
And, um, then I looked back on that on that experience, and I tried to figure out, well, okay, well, what was it about this experience that was actually effective for me? Was it actually the immersion? Can I replicate this with other languages without having to go to each of these countries and put myself in an immersion situation? So then I started trying, you know, trying this, trying that with French. Um, I had always wanted to learn Russian, so I signed up for a Russian class in college. And suddenly, it all just kind of clicked. And suddenly it felt like I was skiing downhill. It was just I was picking up languages really quickly, and then, you know, couldn't be stopped after that.
So I think that, you know, a lot of people say, "I speak a lot of languages." Their their first reaction will be like, "Oh, wow, you must just be really talented at learning languages." And this is the part where I really like, I'm really not being modest. I'm really not being humble, but I I actually genuinely don't think that I have a particular aptitude for this. And I I say that because I do know people that really do. I do know people that pick up languages really quickly. And usually, they don't become linguists because they're not interested. For them, it's so easy that it's not it's not a fascinating process for them. But because for me it was such a struggle, I've really had to, you know, try everything and test every different strategy. And because of that, I'm just so fascinated by the process of language learning, and I think I've been able to come up with some strategies that are useful for other people.
Yeah, the talent discussion is is one that comes up frequently and it is a bit strange to me because I, like you, I don't believe there's such a thing as language learning talent. But I do think that people can have a talent for maybe obsessing is the wrong word, but really diving into a project, whether it's language learning or fitness or, you know, learning a skill or doing something, or it could even be like content creation, as we talked about, you know, someone who starts their blog and and writes, you know, 30 amazing blog posts in a month. I think there is a personality type or maybe it's some kind of I don't know if it's an acquired skill or if it's just something you either have or you don't. But the ability to really bunker down and and just study, study, study and and really be be excited about the finer details about language. Maybe it's not a talent, but it's definitely there's definitely differences in people. Like some people just have that where they can just lock themselves in. I don't know if uh how you feel about that.
Um but a lot of the people that I know who speak the most languages are the people who were able to and and find it interesting to dive deeper and deeper. So they're very self-starting in that way. Whereas other people who are, let's say, moderately successful in languages, they would often be the ones that take a lot of tutoring lessons to kind of help them move along. So I don't know what your experience is in that, but yeah, the the idea that somehow there's a kind of language gene or a talent, that's obviously uh ridiculous and and just an excuse that most people tell themselves. But there there is something there that I'm not sure that it could be nice to to to look into later, some kind of research on that. What kind of uh interest or personality types really do well in languages?
Yeah, definitely. Um, I think you really hit on um what I think is more important than talent in in this case is curiosity. Um, definitely, for me, every time I learn a new language, every time I learn, wait a second, this language, you conjugate for this concept that I never even thought was relevant, you know, like wait, why do you do that? Like every time I learn some new conjugation or some new word that doesn't exist in my other languages, it just it shows you this whole other way of seeing the world and categorizing the world. And it just makes you realize how much is out there and how interesting our brain is. And so for that, I mean that for me is the reason why I keep on plugging away.
And then there's also the the end goal of when you have that breakthrough moment, I know how good it feels. And it like you said, it it's very similar to to exercise and to working out or to setting goals for any kind of self-improvement. You know, I actually, I really, really hate exercising. I really it really is the worst thing in the world for me, but I love that feeling when you step off the treadmill and the endorphins rush on. And so I'm ready to push myself for an hour so that I can get to that end goal. With languages, that first feeling when you have a conversation and you say the words that you've been practicing for so long, and they have the desired effect, you know, it's almost like writing code. You type in the code and then it works. The the other person understands what you said and you can't believe it. It just it that that feeling is so rewarding that, you know, when I'm sitting down at my desk, when I'm getting a little bored, when I'm like, maybe I should, you know, check on my other social media or whatever, then I remember, oh, but if I keep on doing this, you know, I'm going to get to that moment and it's going to feel so good. So, yeah, I totally agree with you that a lot of it is just about understanding motivation and understanding like goal setting. I think that's a huge part of actually, you know, getting the work done to learn a language.
Yeah, and obviously being curious is a is a massive success. I always tell the story of uh I don't know if you know Richard Simcott. He's uh in my view, a completely anecdotal view, he's probably the best polyglot alive, that I know of. Of course, there might be someone hidden away in a bunker in Russia or something, but at least the the one I know. And when you when you meet him, you you you quickly see why and and uh the the story was I was uh he visited me in in in my apartment in in Hungary, and I'd gone to one of those uh MediaMarkt, one of those uh electronics shops, and there was a bag that had like a slogan on it. But it didn't make a lot of sense because it was sort of an idiomatic use. And where most people, and even I think most language learners would just kind of walk past it and not really give it a second thought, Richard would, he just stopped dead in his tracks, and he got his phone out, and he tried to make sense of this what it was saying. Because obviously, he knows a a bit of Hungarian. I mean, he knows a little bit of everything. But so for him, there was that instant curiosity, even though he was on his way out the door and and he had two people just waiting just standing there. And and I was just kind of observing, just remarkable. And he told me how when he walks through cities, he takes pictures of billboards and sides of cars and, you know, if there's anything that doesn't make any sense. So, uh definitely see the effect of of curiosity. And if you don't have that natural sense of curiosity, I think languages can be very, very tough, uh just because there's it's going to be hard to keep pushing yourself to discover more about it.
Yeah, definitely. Definitely agree.
But if you have it, then uh the world's your oyster and uh you can learn any language you want. So, yeah. Um, one thing I want to just move on is uh you after you had French and then you took Russian in in in college. And when did you decide to actually do something professionally with languages? Because that's also a big step, and I know that a lot of people listening are probably younger people in in maybe they're in in high school or below, now they at some point have to make a decision about their future career. So, can you tell us a little bit about what you were thinking about at the time and and what kind of opportunities it gives to go into it more academically?
Yeah, definitely. Um, well, first of all, there are so many so many ways, um, so many different industries that you can go into if you're interested in languages. But I had started out on the academic track. Um, so I was doing research on Nicaraguan Sign Language and what this language can teach us about our brain and what it can teach us about the evolution of language, um, which was a fascinating topic for me. I loved the research, I loved doing I loved doing fieldwork, I loved analyzing this crazy language. Um, but after about a year and a half of my PhD, I realized I didn't really want to be a professor. Right. I didn't really like arguing with students about their grades, I didn't really like applying for IRB up, you know, doing the IRB applications. I really just wanted to be working with languages all the time.
So, at that point, I dropped out of the PhD and I got a job at a translation company. So, I really just wanted to see, you know, how do you make money with languages, basically. And I was working as a project manager there, and it was so much fun. I was I had access to all these different industries and all different languages. And any given day, say we'd get a request from a client, they would need Arabic into French. And I'd get to actually use what I learned in my linguistics degree. Arabic, okay, so we need to know which dialect it is. Is it Maghrebi? Is it Levantine? Um, how are we going to do the type setting? And I would hire the the linguist to do the project. And, you know, every day was different. You'd have pharmaceuticals, you'd have, um, clinical, you'd have legal. And I really, really loved that that role.
Um, and then I ended up moving to Korea. I I wanted to move to Asia to start working on my Asian languages more. I wanted to specifically, I wanted to work on my Chinese. Um, long story short, I ended up in Korea instead. And since I didn't have a job there, I just started freelancing as a translator. I was doing Spanish and French into English. Um, because now, you know, as a translator, you can work in whatever languages you want anywhere in the world because of the internet. So, my clients that were in the US were really happy that they could send me a translation at the end of their day when I was waking up and I could have it for them by their morning, you know, and no one had to work overnight.
So, I was doing that, and I was getting so many requests for Korean translation. People would see, you know, they'd find me on LinkedIn, they'd see that I was a translator, that I lived in Korea. They would just assume that I was a Korean translator, and they were obviously just so desperate for Korean translation, they were just throwing documents at me and uh begging me to translate them. And so I was going out and finding colleagues to do it, um, you know, sending, you know, referring referring people that I knew would actually do the job well. And it got to a point where I was just getting so many of them that I realized, okay, maybe I should just put together a little a little company to handle this, you know, handle all of these requests. And it just ended up kind of snowballing. I was never never meaning to start a company or become an entrepreneur, but it snowballed so fast and just ended up being so rewarding and so much fun that I finally ended up incorporating the company. And now it's, you know, gotten a lot bigger.
Thousands of freelance contractors, yeah?
Yeah, we have about 3,000 freelancers, and we're working in about 200 different language pairs. And, uh, once again, it's so much fun. We we we're working with so many languages, we get to get a peek into all these different industries. And, uh, you know, as a linguist, it's it's really fun to be able to be a little bit of that jack of all trades, get exposure to all these different things without having to be too specialized in any one thing. Now, if I were still the being the translator, then, of course, I do have to get very specialized, but for me as the managing director, I get to sort of see everything and, you know, get to dip my toes into everything.
And since this business is completely online, um, it also gives me a whole lot of flexibility. So, I have been traveling a ton for the last five years. Supposedly I'm based in South Korea, but I travel a lot for conferences or for training to train my new employees or for educational opportunities. And, you know, since I run this business online, as long as I have internet, I can I can make it work. So, I've used these opportunities to learn a little bit of languages here and there, you know, learn a little bit of Vietnamese before I went to Vietnam, a little bit of Mongolian before I went to Mongolia. So, it's really, it's been just the perfect, the perfect situation for a language nerd like me.
Yeah, I can imagine. And it's a wonderful story as well, and I I hear a lot of these, uh, I didn't expect this to grow into what it was, so, yeah. So, it's just wonderful when it happens.
Um, what does it take for someone to be a freelance translator like the one you started out as? What kind of do you need a degree in linguistics, for instance? Or do you need a certificate in any of the languages? Or can anyone, as long as they're good enough, actually start doing what you did?
There's a lot of different ways that people come to translation. Um, one of my favorite things about my old job was or even now still just, you know, when we get hundreds of CVs a day, and I just I love I I don't handle the CVs anymore. I have someone else that handles that, but I still like to peek at them because you see how this person got to where they are. So, you know, sometimes I'll see something that go across my desk, it's a Japanese into Lithuanian translator, and I'm like, wow, how did this person end up learning, how did this Lithuanian end up getting so good in Japanese that they can translate? And, you know, you go through the CV and sometimes I I can't help it. Sometimes I email them. I say, wow, I'm just so inspired by your CV. I just wanted to know, how did you get to here, how did you get to there? And really, there's no one way to do it.
Um, if you're looking for guidance, then I definitely recommend looking into a certificate program, specifically for translation or a master's program. But a lot of people, um, don't do that. Um, you can also, you can become a really good translator if you find a good mentor. You find a mentor that, you know, is an established translator and you have them edit your work for a while. It does it does take a lot more work. It is important for people to know that it's not just enough to know the two languages. You'd be amazed when I look back at my really early translation work, I'm just really amazed at the decisions that I was making, you know, given that I'm fluent in these two languages, um, you learn over time to avoid certain pitfalls, you know, to avoid certain, um, literal translations, um, certain cognates, um, so right out of the box just knowing the two languages is not enough. We like to say that it's, you know, owning a camera does not make you a photographer. You you have to learn how to wield your tool.
But yeah, either finding a mentor or finding a program, I did the the certificate program at NYU, which unfortunately no longer exists, but they still have a master's program that you can do. You can also do it online, I think. Um, yeah, these online programs exist all over the world. And now there's just so many courses online that you can do, um, that are very, very helpful on like Udemy or all all of these different platforms. We can find really important, um, advice. Also on the blog on our on my on my translation company's website, that's meridianlinguistics.com, we have, um, a few blog posts specifically on how do you become a freelance translator, how do you, um, study to get to that point, and then how do you actually start finding work. So, they can also, people can also go there if they're interested.
And, um, sometimes people come to it because they are particularly specialized in one field. So, lawyers, if you if you're a lawyer and you're tired of lawyering, then for sure, come to us because legal translation is in very high demand. And, you know, if you don't have a law degree, it's very difficult to do quality legal translation. So, we do get a lot of people that come to us from the legal field, that speak two languages, and they just need a little bit of honing, but, you know, pretty soon they're up and running. So, lots of different ways that you can come to this field and, but there's so much demand for translation right now. Um, if people are interested in going into that as a way to use their languages, I highly recommend it.
It's funny, isn't it? Uh I thought that uh we could just all use Google Translate now and like, why do why is there demand for translation growing? No, that's a joke, of course, but
Well, you know, you say it as a joke, but it's yeah, it's really a question that people ask and I I do think it's a good question. But as I always say, you know, I think Google Translate's my best advertising because, you know, Google is an extremely successful and innovative company. And they've been working on Google Translate for a long time. But all anyone has to do is type in a sentence and see the results, and they see suddenly how difficult translation is, you know. Google has not solved this. So it's a really difficult problem.
So, um, but the cool thing about machine translation, and, you know, there have been big strides in the last few years. The cool thing about machine translation is it's making our job so much easier as translators. It's taking away a lot of the grunt work. So, it's helping so that we don't have to translate the same line over and over. It's helping, you know, stick in the dates where we need them. And we can do a lot of the more nuanced, more gratifying intellectual work as the humans, you know, manning the computer. So, so I think, yeah, it's a really exciting time to be a translator.
And especially because, you know, this world has globalized so fast. We have Skype, we no longer need to fly into business meetings. We we, you know, we can do teleconferences. We have WhatsApp, we have, you know, email. The last barrier really is just language. So, that's the last thing that people really need to have to be able to communicate, to be able to sell to any market. They still need to be able to translate, they still need to be able to interpret because these languages are not going away. Well, many languages are going away in the next few years, but about, you know, 600 of them will not. So, translation is still going to be the last barrier to globalization. And so there's still and now that there's so much content out there in the world that needs to be translated. It's it's just it's a really exciting time to be in this field.
Yeah, and also, I think sometimes people say, okay, well, we can just all speak English together, but even if people knew English from all every country, which I don't even think we're close to that point anyway, but if even if we did, then I think it's all about service, it's all about customer service. The idea that, let's say, someone in Denmark, if you call up a a number, let's say you're renting a car or whatever, you call up a number and you get an English speaking agent, you might be perfectly fine to do that conversation in that language, but if you have a someone speaking your language, it's that old uh Mandela quote that that gets thrown around a lot. Uh if if you have customer service in your language or even advertising or anything, it just it just hits way harder, it's much better.
Yeah. And I think that's why translation will pretty much always be there because language is culture, and you need to, you know, direct your advertising, your help, your everything. So it fits not only linguistically, but also culturally. And that's why translations are needed because they're they're not just linguists, as as you've pointed out, but they are also, you know, cultural translators in the sense that you need to translate, you know, the polite forms, and you need to translate the kind of the way to address people and and how to uh even get points across. Where, you know, in Danish, people don't really care much about these polite forms or uh these pronouns, but if you're if you're writing in Japanese, I imagine you need to be very correct in terms of what form you use and and and Google will not help you do that very often. Likewise, if you translate, you're talking to a friend and you translate the polite form, they're going to be like, why are you do you think I'm an old woman or something?
Exactly.
I've had that multiple times, you know, why I've started learning a language, and I've used, let's say, the textbook, and for some reason, all textbooks assume that nobody has any friends. And it's like, uh, you know, if you want to talk to the hotel or the book a restaurant or something, you use the polite form. And then you try and use it with your friends and they're like, what I'm not an old woman, you know. But it's fine. I find that really funny.
But yeah, so there'll always be translation, I think. And the better the better companies can utilize native uh content, I think the better they will do in the marketplace. Because if you just outsource it all to, I don't know, an English speaking country, where it's probably cheaper, then you just lose that service, and then people will change to companies that actually do offer that real service. And there's lots of people don't don't know English well enough, especially if it's complicated matters. Like, can you imagine imagine calling someone in, you know, if you're if you're an English native speaker and you have to explain tax laws or, I don't know, insurance or anything in Hungarian or something. That would be probably similar to to many uh speakers of, let's say, a smaller language calling an English help desk with a really complicated matter.
Right.
It's just impossible.
Right, exactly.
Um but but yeah, lots of translators uh obviously and uh a few of my friends also work with uh agencies, so it's it's it's definitely growing. And and if if people are sitting there looking for a a flexible job, I would say like you mentioned, it's pretty globalized, then it's a fantastic uh field to get into. If you can see yourself doing the the type of work. Because I I did it for a little while just to see, okay, is this something I could potentially go into? So I did some informal translations from Danish to English, uh because I'm I'm bilingual. So that was easy for me. But I just realized like I can't be this is not me. Like I I can't do this. Uh it was okay translating from Danish into English, because English is very, you know, uh nice and expressive. But Danish was always super duper awkward and it was you had to write 20 more words for each sentence and it sounded so stupid. So you just kind of ended up pulling out your hair and just this idea of sitting with a massive text, let's say 20 pages that you have to translate. I know you have technology to help you uh get some of like you said, some of the grunt work done. But for me, I just don't have the patience and and personality to just dive into that. So, if somebody's listening out there, you know, give it a try, just uh for, you know, informally on your own, just try and sit down with it because it's really it's really an intellectual pursuit.
Yeah, that's interesting.
Um, but but yeah, definitely the same. But that's again going back to probably why I'm not a good fit for translation. I just don't have that I don't I can't keep doing one thing for for too long. I just get bored. So, for me, it's it's a really bad fit. And and again, just the restrictions that it imposes. You know, I would get a a paragraph and I I would just say to myself, there's no way I can translate this. So what I'm going to do instead, which I guess is still translation, is I'm going to delete it all and I'm going to rewrite it with the meaning that they were trying to get across. Yeah. You know, it's like and that point I was just like, that is this is so pointless. Why don't they just tell me what they want to say? And then I'll write the whole thing instead of translating this irrelevant piece of content, you know.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, unfortunately, you would probably make a really good translator because you recognize that, you know, you understand what you have to do. It's just it's too bad that it's just not fun, you know.
Yeah, it doesn't it's not fun for me at all. It's just it's a really kind of a finicky uh uh topic, and and yeah, I can see why it'd be interesting to find these small improvements and and look up these definitions to make it really correct. I'm also a bit of a perfectionist, so I would definitely do that. Uh but for me, it's just it's not just it's not my thing. And that's totally fine, you know. I tried it just to make sure that I wasn't wrong about it and now I know that it's a fascinating subject, and I know that a lot of people will do really well in it, but it's not for me. Um, but another thing I was interested in is uh we obviously talk a lot about travel here on the podcast as well, and you said you moved to Korea. Um, how did you or how's the visa rules and and stuff like that over there? Is it possible for people to just come and and hang out for a while, or did you stay within a tourist visa, or how did that work?
Yeah, well, so first of all, obviously, I have to say, I'm not a lawyer, and uh take my advice at your own risk and definitely do your own, um, due diligence on this. But for Americans, we can come in on tourist visas that you don't have to secure in advance. And we can stay for up to three months at a time. So, generally, as long as you leave, you can go to Japan, you can go to there's plenty of countries nearby that you can go to. Um you can come right back, basically doing the visa run. And in my my experience, I was traveling so much that I never even had to do a visa run, it's worked out really well.
Right. That's good. Because obviously, the one thing when you have this kind of uh locationless uh lifestyle where you can work from anywhere, a lot of people are are curious as to where that might be. Because for me, what I I like to have a base, first of all. I I really like having a base here in the UK just for tax reasons, just having a an apartment to come home to even if I've been gone for a month or something. But even if even if even that, I could go to other countries for or I was thinking about it for a long time as well, and I know a lot of people want to travel and maybe stay abroad for a year or more, but the visa rules are quite complicated, and I I think it's a bit of a hassle with all these visa runs, not that you can't do it, but it's a shame that we can't just uh have open borders everywhere.
Yeah, it's not like Yeah. Yeah, we like that.
Yeah, but I guess it's not possible with all the social welfare systems of every country, it'll be too hard to manage uh also taxes, I guess then.
Yeah, yeah.
You have to privatize everything and then it'll be very awkward to be a citizen of that country anyway.
Yeah, taxes taxes are a huge drawback of the the digital nomad lifestyle. You just even trying to figure out where you owe them and making sure that you're covered on all bases. I actually have three accountants. I have I'm an American so I have to pay American taxes no matter where I live. So I pay American taxes. I have to pay Hong Kong taxes. Yeah, exactly.
Three.
Freedom taxes. Um, I also I have a Hong Kong accountant because my company's based in Hong Kong and then uh Korea as well because that's where my, you know, butt is usually in the chair there. So, it's uh it's quite a hassle. But I can't complain, you know, that's the price that I pay to be able to travel and work all over the place and get to know different languages. So.
Of course. That's good. And how did you after after Russian and and now we're a few years later into your story, what what did you go after? Did you have any more sort of organized projects in terms of language learning, or any big ambitions, uh how did you take kind of move from school learning to independent learning, and what did you see any did you face any struggles in in that sense?
Um, yeah, definitely. I mean, learning languages in college was so wonderful because you're set up with this class, you have a teacher that knows how to put together the lesson plan, you have you're motivated by shame, you know, you want to do well on your tests, and you want to sound good in class when you talk in front of your classmates. So, so much is taken care of for you when you're studying in in the college, um, setting. So, when I left college and I knew first of all, I didn't want to lose my languages. I wanted to make sure I didn't forget, um, what I had learned, which I did. I ended up doing. I have forgotten nearly all of my Russian. So, that that was really sad. But, um, I did manage to keep up my Spanish and French and my Chinese. And then when I moved to Korea, I had to pick up Korean from scratch. I hadn't studied any Korean before. And, um, that has really been, I guess, the experience that truly forced me to figure out the most effective ways to learn a language because Korean is really, really hard. I actually came to the country feeling really cocky. I'm a linguist. You know, my job is literally to learn languages. And, um, here's this uh language that doesn't even have a character system. It has an amazing alphabet. It's like one of the best alphabets in the world. You start out in the beginning, it makes a lot of sense. And then about two months into my Korean learning, I was actually studying at this small school. And I asked the teacher, why haven't we learned how to say and yet?
Yeah.
And she said, oh, no, no, no, we'll we'll get to that. We'll get to that. And that's when I knew that I was in trouble.
Yikes.
So, yeah, Korean is the grammar is so complex. And so I I tried studying in this class that was about an hour a day, uh a little private school, um, with maybe five other classmates. Um, that definitely helped. Um, I also had a tutor. Uh she came to my house every day at 6:00 AM, um so that I wouldn't be, um, like likely to put off the class or cancel the class because of any work that came up. So, I knew 6:00 AM, I'm not I don't have anything else going on. Um, so she would show up. A lot of the times I'd wake up when the doorbell rang. You know, brush the teeth quickly as she came up in the elevator. And, uh, then, you know, slide over to the kitchen and start my class. And that worked well.
Um, then I discovered all these other great tools that you can find online, like, you know, KoreanClass101 and, uh, Memrise and Duolingo, and now drops and started cobbling together like a multi-pronged attack to learn this darn language that was causing me so much trouble. Um, and so that was really going through that process was really, really educational for me.
And then it got to the point that, you know, other people saw me struggling with this language and they knew that I spoke other languages, and they would come to me and say, "Hey, you know, how did you, how did you learn Chinese? I'm thinking about learning Chinese." And I would just write them this novel back, you know, like, based on what I knew about you, based on your work schedule and your goals, this is what I think you should do. And you should use use this tool for this amount of time. And and I got so into, you know, figuring out how to optimize language learning for other people. And that's that's pretty much why I started trying to create content. So, starting my blog and my YouTube channel, um, and writing a lot about languages on Instagram and Twitter because I feel like there's a perfect plan out there for everyone. A perfect plan that's going to help them stay motivated, that's going to help them just see language in the right way. So that things kind of click into place.
Um, and there's just so many exciting tools out there now that we have access to. There's so many ways that we can take advantage of just little pockets of time. Someone recently messaged me and they said, "Just, but how do you have the time to learn these languages?" And I told them, "Listen, if I have five minutes, you know, I go on my drops, I go on my Duolingo. Just do a little bit here and there." There's no longer any excuses. If you can carve out five minutes while you're waiting in line or you're waiting for the elevator or you're waiting for the bus, um, you can do a little bit then. And just, you know, that time really does add up. Um, so as long as you can use that time efficiently, and we're so lucky that now we have all these great things online that we can use.
So, when I was studying American Sign Language in back in when I was living in New York, I like to give this example of I I was living up in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, that's like in the north. And I would have to take this bus all the way down, and then I'd have to take a bus across town. And in all, it was like three hours to get to my class. And
What?
This was, you know, I was a college student. Three hours are very valuable when you're a college student. You can be studying for your other classes, you can be partying. You know, this is not time you want to be spending on the bus, right?
Where in New York? What? Three hours?
No, yeah, but the traffic the traffic is pretty terrible. You you do not want to be getting on buses in New York, that's for sure. But, um, there was no, I mean, carrying all my textbooks, I couldn't walk it. So it was uh, yeah, it was it was this is sort of my my both ways in the snow, barefoot kind of story, you know. Back in my day, it was so difficult to learn languages. This is what I had to do. And now all of you guys have the internet. You have Memrise, you have apps on your phone. Like, there's no longer any excuses that you can use to say that you don't have time to learn a language. So, so it's so exciting for me to be able to help other people make that realization. You know, like one tool that I really, really like is italki. Um, because I feel like it really helps keep me motivated and, you know, I love that I can find tutors that will create lesson plans for me. And I just love when I tell people, oh, but you know, you can just study a language on Skype, you know. Like, there's no excuses. While you're on vacation, while you're, you know, in airport lounges, if you have a little bit of time, you can hop on and you can do a class. And for a lot of people when they realize, oh, you mean I don't have to like sign up for a university program? A lot of people just haven't thought about it, you know. And so it's so fun for them to to have those breakthrough moments and to realize that they can do it too.
Yeah, and uh italki I think one of them it's one of my most recommended resources as well, just because I don't think people realize in general that you can actually go online and get someone to help you with the language for an hour, completely, you know, undivided attention for, you know, $10 or less, definitely. And people always like, ah, well, classes are expensive, and I have to go all the way down to the local university or whoever is hosting the classes. I'm just like, first of all, why would you want a class anyway? It's like, there's 20 people there, and there's one teacher, so you're sharing that in 20 different parts, and you're always going to be moving at the slowest student. And it costs a fortune, like, uh, you know, if you want to learn German in London, for instance, 36 hours of study is about $500 US dollars. So you can have 100 one-to-one lessons, probably, on italki, or you can have 36 group lessons where you also have to get there, so you have to commute or the the transport there. So,
Yeah, there's the time.
Yeah, that's and that's huge, you know. You when you're learning from home, you can you can just wake up like you did for your Korean and and just turn on Skype and you're there. And I also think Skype is a better learning tool because you can just type in what you want to say or what the teacher can type in corrections. You can't do that in a classroom. You can put it on the board, of course, but again, that takes ages. Um, so you know, spreading that awareness is definitely something that I'm trying to do just for for anyone who's interested. Because I think and also you're kind of you're outsourcing responsibility a little bit and accountability. Because instead of you having to, you know, be disciplined and open up the app or the textbooks every day, you just set an appointment with the teacher and, you know, they kind of force you to show up. Like, or if you get the teacher to come to your place, I mean, that's even better.
Exactly. Exactly. I love using italki for that.
Yeah, I like to do that regular weekly or even more often uh lesson if you can, that that's going to be really powerful because often times we just procrastinate and you're like, oh, I should be doing this, but you don't really get around to it. And the craziest one I've heard lately, which is not crazy when you think about it, but it's actually a I I think it's a really good idea is when you have tutoring lessons often they are kind of back and forth speaking, you know, a bit like conversation practice, but you maybe the the teacher prepares some uh grammar materials or some explanations for you. Uh and those lessons can be good as well, but actually what I what I heard someone doing recently was silent lessons, which is really funny. The idea of, so basically what you do is the teacher can't say anything, and you have a shared Google Doc where you uh see what all the sentences and and everything. And then you just speak. Uh and the teacher will then if if there's something you don't know or if there's something you need uh a translation for, the teacher can type it into the chat box of Skype and then it'll be or into the Google Drive anyway. And I I was just thinking, that's pretty genius because the problem I have often is that the tutor will be speaking mostly in the lesson because obviously that person's much better than I am. And I know there are there's a different quality of teachers, of course, you can find people who are better. And the better teacher is going to have more patience, of course, and maybe won't speak as much. But certainly, my experience has been, it's it's definitely been about 50/50. And if you think about it, yeah, it's good to get some listening practice, but is that really the best use of the one-on-one time? I think it's about production, and then getting instant feedback on the production like you did with your tutor, where she was basically correcting your pronunciation and maybe grammar as well. I don't know if you if you made any of those grammar mistakes, she could pick up on it immediately. Um, so maybe the a way to encourage people to do more lessons is also how to structure the lessons, because you have complete freedom. You can do anything. I mean, you can ask the teacher to do anything. And if the teacher doesn't want to do it, well, there's 10,000 other teachers for that language. So you just find one who's willing to do it and and works within your guidelines or whatever you want to do. Um, but that can be a big task if you're just starting out or if you're maybe you're an inexperienced learner. It might be tempting to just kind of let the teacher run everything and just follow along. But I think it's really important to take charge and say, okay, this is what I struggle with the most, so let's do it like this.
I so I really agree with that. I've just come to that recognition pretty recently, um, when I started using this new method where I basically write out short little monologues that I'm going to commit to put up on social media. So, you know, it gives me a little bit of extra motivation that I'm going to embarrass myself in front of everyone, in front of native speakers. And so it gives me extra motivation to do really well. So, I prepare this monologue, I write it out, and then I have it corrected by a tutor, and it's basically stuff that I want to talk about. It's stuff that's going to be relevant to me. So, it's my introduction, maybe it's me talking about my work or what I do, and I have some correct it so that I I see what kind of grammatical mistakes I made. And then I have the tutor record it themselves so that I can hear how the native speaker would sound. And I just listen to that over and over and over until I've really nailed not just the pronunciation of the consonants and vowels but the prosody, the overall musicality of the language. And then after that, then I record it myself, and sometimes the way that I actually finally end up saying it is not exactly the way that I had, you know, practiced it before or had written it before. But the just the process of having worked on that so many times and worked on words and sentences that are actually relevant to me and actually important to me, um, is so useful because, you know, then someday you end up in a situation where you're going to need to use that that sentence. And it just rolls off the tongue because you practiced it for so long. And you weren't wasting your time learning, you know, the 50 different colors that you're never going to use to identify clothes you're never going to buy. But, you know, you were really putting in that time on stuff that's relevant to you. So, yeah, I definitely, definitely agree.
Exactly. And the other problem is also you might do the same thing over and over. So if you have a weekly lesson with the tutor, if it's an hour long, you might spend the first 20 or 30 minutes with the exact same script, you know, how are you doing, what's new, how's the weather? And so you become really good at a very, very small part of the language. Whereas I think that's a bit of a a shame because it's better to just, you know, jump right into new material. But that's a that's, you know, that's because we're all human. You know, when you make friends with your tutor, you want to catch up, you know. Uh so that's a a dangerous trap to fall into, I feel like, where you can you can get this false sense of security because you're so good at the first five sentences of a conversation, and then you just kind of flatline completely. You know, it's it's the same. I don't know if you try it, but when I was in Hungary, I I became really good at the the opener. So, ordering a coffee or, you know, how are you, whatever. And I became so good that people mistook me for a native speaker. They just, you know, blabbered back in ridiculously fast and complicated Hungarian. And I just sort of had to do a double take and to say, you know what, I'm not that good. Uh please speak slowly, and then they and then they heard it because I wasn't as good on that sentence. So, sometimes, and this is uh this is kind of counterintuitive, I think, but sometimes it can help if you put on a little bit of a an accent on the first sentence, just uh
Yeah.
Just uh on purpose, just so they know.
To warn them in advance.
Yeah. Just so they know because I've had that so many times where I don't know if if it's because I just practice that sentence over and over, or if it's because you just use it so much, but I was just really good at that first sentence. And then, you know, they don't give you any uh time to actually uh listen to the next sentence. And they just have like 200 words a minute and Yeah, I call that um, I call it taxi Korean or taxi Chinese or taxi whatever language I'm studying because you know, when you get in that taxi and you introduce yourself and maybe they hear a little bit of the accents they're like, oh, where are you from? Why do you speak Hungarian? You know, what do you think about our country? What do you like to eat? Those first, you know, you know, you're going to get the same 10 questions every single time. I have mastered taxi Korean. So like I will tell them why I'm learning Korean, how long I've been studying it, how much I love kimbap. I you know, I wish I could eat kimchi but it's too spicy. I've got that down. But they soon as they diverge from that. Yeah, then they're very impressed. And then as soon as they ask something I wasn't expecting then I'm like, oh, so actually I'm not that good at Korean. Can you speak a little bit more slowly and Yeah. Yeah, so exactly. I call it taxi Korean. Yeah.
So when it comes to tutoring, I think it's important to not fall into that trap because you have a choice. You can really design the lessons and and it's, you know, have a five minute catch up for sure. Like, definitely. Cuz you're I mean, you're people and you you will face those sentences anyway, you know. People will ask you how are you doing and how's the weather and everything. What are you doing? What did you do in the weekend? But be very kind of structured in in going into the material and try to produce as much as possible. I think it's what I've learned with tutoring because I've done probably done about a hundred lessons in the last few years. And that's not a lot for a lot of people do way more, but for me, I didn't really achieve the results that I think I could have because I didn't take any responsibility. I just kind of showed up for the lessons. And yeah, it was helpful and I'm sure that I've learned something. But I just know that if I took charge and and went, okay, I'm going to speak for as long as I can, and if you hear anything that's wrong, can you just type it down in this spreadsheet or Google Drive sheet? Uh and then you can talk about it after. Um because then I would have just worked so much more on my own production instead of just kind of small talking and and doing what the teacher thought was was was uh useful. And this will vary between teachers. Some teachers are amazing and some teachers are more laid back. They're more conversation practice really, which I also think is important. But I just think in general, people are probably not getting enough uh of their own production and they just, you know, outsource the responsibility and accountability for sure. But be sure to structure the lessons where you get the most out of it and it's not just a a small talk 15 minutes and, you know, you just get on with your day. It's better to go into depth and maybe try the silent method if you want it. I think it's an interesting one.
Oh, yeah.
I haven't haven't put it into practice myself yet, but I I definitely I'm interested in it. You obviously have to find a teacher who's who's willing to work like that because it's it's it's not normal to just speak quiet for an hour and just sit and write. But uh
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm sure it's possible.
Yeah, that's that it sounds a little terrifying to me, you know, that silence that how do I fill the silence? But um, but it sounds really effective. I think that's a really it's a really good point that you need to you really need to guide your lessons towards the content that's going to be relevant to you. Maybe you're lucky that you have a lot in common with your italki tutor, but, you know, in a lot of cases I don't. And, um, to be the most effective with your time, yeah, you should be working on exactly what you're going to be saying, exactly what you're going to be needing to discuss. And the only way you do that is by guiding it yourself.
Exactly. You definitely need to be take charge, I think. Because it is a tempting just to let the teacher dictate everything. Um, even as simple as what level the content should be at. My Russian teacher was very patient in the beginning, which was required because I knew basically nothing. And so we were speaking very slowly, very basically. And then after a few months or or weeks maybe, I was like, you know what, I can actually I I understand most of what you're saying now, so can we speed it up a bit? And she did right away. And she was like, oh, okay, let's try that. She sped it up and everything was fine. I understood everything. Because we had been doing it the slow way first. But if I hadn't asked her to do it, she might have assumed that I still was struggling with that pace. So it's all about taking the initiative and and pushing for it, which I think is counterintuitive because you take that class mentality where you just kind of have to show up because that's what we're all taught when we go to school and and so on. Once you go to college and university, obviously, you you're taught differently, but in the early years, it's basically just show up and the teacher will tell you what to do.
Right. Right.
So, that's fantastic. What luxury?
What a luxury!
One, what a luxury. Indeed, if you have a personal teacher, then it's it's I mean, there aren't that many fields where you can have a personal anything for that kind of investment. You know, if you want a personal chef, that's pretty expensive. Um, personal uh assistant, expensive, uh accountants, everything's expensive. But for some reason, teachers are are very affordable, and anyone should definitely take that opportunity.
Definitely.
Fantastic. Well, Sarah, it's been a pleasure to talk to you today. Uh time has flown by. Uh, you mentioned a couple of uh resources and websites where people can find you. Do you just want to reiterate that just where the best is and maybe people have questions for you or or they want to find out more about you or your translation business?
Sure, yeah. So, if you're interested in translation specifically, you can go to our website. That's www.meridianlinguistics.com. So, M E R I D I A N linguistics.com. Um, we have a lot of resources on there for if you want to get started in the translation industry, or if you're already a little more seasoned and you need you're looking for some tools, um, we have um a lot of tools up there.
Then if you're more on the language learning side, if you're interested in advice on how to learn languages in a, you know, language agnostic way, but I I have content up there for um just general language learning tips, but then also some specific language learning tips for languages that I've studied, like Korean and Chinese, um, Indonesian and Malay. Um, they can go to my personal blog, which is misslinguistic.com. And uh I also have uh Instagram misslinguistic. Uh on Twitter, I'm Miss Linguistic, M S Linguistic, because misslinguistic was taken.
And uh and yeah, you can go there and see um the content that I post a lot of content about linguistics and about language learning, also about travel and culture. You know, right now I'm I'm living in Malaysia, which is a super interesting sociolinguistic situation. So many different languages here. Um so I'm writing a lot about about that on Instagram and Twitter, you know, what it's like to just um first of all, figure out what language I'm supposed to be using, and then, you know, get to mix them all up all the time. And it's uh so much fun and it's also just a beautiful country. So, I also, you know, post a lot about travel and about these countries that I visit. So, they can yeah, check out my social media. Um, and you can always reach out to me through the, you know, direct messages on any of those social medias. I'm always happy to talk to people about language learning or about translation.
Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, and uh all the best with the with the business, and any future languages to come.
Thanks a lot. You too.
Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Actual Fluency podcast. I really appreciate having you here today. Just before you leave, I just want to give a quick shout-out to today's sponsor, which is italki. Italki is the tutoring platform where you can find affordable tutors for every language in the world, pretty much. So get started today and get a free $10 credit when you book your first lesson. If you go to actualfluency.com/italki, that's spelled I T A L K I. So give it a go and feel how tutoring can really boost and enhance your language learning.