Looking for ideas to put my bilingual skills to better use
Posted by CoSell member · Location-independent
I’m bilingual in English and Spanish. Spanish was my first language, and I lived abroad before making the U.S. my home. Over the years I’ve helped people communicate in both languages, including translating for customers and staff.
I also ran a small business called Ed’s Errands Plus, where some of the services I offered included tutoring and translation.
These days I’m doing freelance work online and exploring ways to put those bilingual skills to better use—especially helping people or small businesses communicate clearly between English and Spanish.
I’m bilingual in English and Spanish.…
Why I’m posting this
I’d like ideas for putting my underused English-Spanish skills in translation, proofreading and editing to better use.
Free public Ideas
There are a lot of people who struggle with languages even if they learn them well at school at have great grades - coming to an environment with native speakers is always hard. Can offer help for anyone in that situation - relocating to the US from spanish speaking countries or the other way around - with adaptation and some crash courses on that. Given you lived the experience yourself with a few more cases like that you can probably spot common things - issues everyone has, typical words/situations they struggle with - and create some guide that would help - that can be a good lead magnet.
Businesses - can look at Spanish companies in the US and US companies in Spain (branches, franchises etc) - presume they all have workers with one or the other language being problematic. Same - I would go for guides that you can either give free in exchange for an email, as lead generation or at low cost, then upsell to more hands on help you can provide.
Also obviously content - just go through some websites of companies - I've seen so many ridiculous translations, not just grammar but totally missing context and specifics etc. so catching and pointing those out, establishing yourself as the go-to expert for real, human and with context translation between the two languages can be a good way to go.
With the use of AI this is probably a market that has dipped with freelance online work. However, have you tried in person gigs? like checking in with Hospitals or schools who could use an in person translator?
Your interest in context could suit a customer-service agency handling both languages. Review a small set of real, anonymised support replies and build a bilingual phrase guide around recurring misunderstandings. They bring the situations; you help staff sound clear and natural, creating a practical ongoing service.
There might be some prospect with this.
Suggested post: I’m starting a local news project for central Madrid in English and Spanish. Who’d like to write or translate with me?
Ideas are free public suggestions. Proposals are paid and private and are never shown here.