Unlock the full potential of your SEO translation services. Teresa from TAGS – Language Solutions teaches us that leaving your 9 to 5 job and becoming a successful freelancer is possible.
Welcome to this episode of The Localization Podcast where you’ll learn about the following:
- What is SEO translation
- How to use keywords
- The best tools for SEO localization
- How to niche down from general translation to SEO translation
- Balancing translations for humans and machines
- How to lose clients the smart way
- Getting traumatized… by ponies?!
Andrej Zito
So maybe for starters, tell us where are you located right now? Where are you from?
Teresa Sousa
Okay, so I’m in Brussels, but I’m originally from Portugal, from Porto, which is the second biggest city in, in Portugal. It’s in the north. But I moved to Belgium about six years ago. And I’ve been living here since then, because I moved here for my husband’s job. And yeah.
Andrej Zito
Is it a big change compared to the Portuguese culture?
Teresa Sousa
It was actually, unexpectedly, because it’s not that far. I imagined for Americans or Canadians
Andrej Zito
is ridiculous. It’s all your fear all the same?
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, I actually, I have a lot of, even for Brazilians, sometimes I have Brazilian colleagues telling me oh, I have someone living close to you in Poland. And Sweden. For us. It’s completely crazy. Um, but yeah, it was a big difference, because Portugal is more southern Europe, more Mediterranean. The people are very different. So when I moved to Belgium, it was quite a quite a cultural shock. But yeah, but now I I feel I feel like home. Yeah. What was the
Andrej Zito
biggest challenge for you to get used to Belgium?
Teresa Sousa
Ah, let me start from for the smallest challenge, which is a big misconception. The weather is not that terrible. Everybody thinks that. Brussels is like this grey thing. And for me, it’s not that terrible, maybe because Porto is also a very dark city. So I was already used to it. But it’s part of the sharp the charm, I think. But I know the people are very different. It’s a more closed mentality. I think. In Portugal, people are very open. I mean, at least my people, they are very open and you will make friends very easily. And here it’s a little bit different. But it has its its upsides.
Andrej Zito
So how did you overcome that challenge with the people? Where are you looking where you’re looking to connect with locals? Or where you may be from the beginning looking to socialise with your people?
Teresa Sousa
Yeah. Well, first of all, I moved here, I was already 35 years old. And it was my first experience outside of my home country. So it’s kind of difficult to make friends when you’re in your 30s. Some people already have children, they have their families, and they’re super busy, or they’re focused on their careers or whatever. And in Brussels, there’s this big bubble because we have all the major European institutions here, lots of nonprofits, lots of different organisations. So there’s this kind of bubble where people don’t even speak the languages, French and Flemish that we speak here, so they only speak English that they don’t get out of this. So I know I knew that this I didn’t want. I didn’t want to stay in this bubble. One way that was great for me to start connecting and start meeting people was actually starting connecting with translators. And there’s a nice group here, there’s a nice network, and I joined them and they have nice events. Actually, they have their first conference this year. And I just started meeting colleagues and other freelancers. And this was a big step.
Andrej Zito
How did you meet the group? How did you find the group, but this was a few lock lines or through prose or some,
Teresa Sousa
I think I found them actually through Facebook page. Translators in Belgium, something like everyone know how exactly I stumbled upon that. And they had an event, kind of casual event one day and I just crashed. It’s like, uninvited, basically, like, I’m a translator, I guess I belong here. And everybody was super nice and super welcoming. So this was great. I met a lot of people and we’re still much many of us are still in touch regularly. So yeah, that was was nice.
Andrej Zito
Any other tips for 30 plus year old women to find friends? Yeah, besides professional
Teresa Sousa
groups, I can start a support group. Yeah, basically, our job is a great way of meeting people actually, but just going out there speaking to people I mean, it’s it depends on conference while you are with that. I’m becoming more and more of an introvert I guess, with age or something like that. But when I when I moved here, I was still kind of kind of Portuguese, more person. And just sometimes if you feel lonely, you’ll find somebody that is also feeling lonely and you’ll start speaking and you’ll meet somebody else and pretty much goes like this. I think
Andrej Zito
you’re Opening line. Are you feeling lonely? Feeling lonely?
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, why not? Why not? But yeah, sometimes you feel like you’re super weird and everything and then you find that person. That’s
Andrej Zito
weird people. Weird. Alright, so you already mentioned that you consider yourself to be a translator. So maybe you Let’s go back to the professional field. How did you actually get into translation? Or localization?
Teresa Sousa
Well, this is the therapy part. No, no, not really. I mean, I always liked languages. I’m not one of those cases where you end up doing something completely different from what you wanted. Even growing up, I always liked reading and learning new languages. In high school, I made a very unpopular choice, which was starting to learn German, it wasn’t very, very common in, in Portugal, we would learn English, maybe French. But German wasn’t very popular. So but I always had this curiosity. So yeah, pretty much. So
Andrej Zito
were you. Were you Sorry to interrupt. Were you learning German on top of English and French? Or did you swept German for the, for the other more popular language?
Teresa Sousa
No, not usually in Portugal, you learn English and French as in my day, it was like this, I have no idea how it is now. But we would learn English and French. Spanish is kind of we learned by listening and trying to. But I didn’t have any actual any formal training. So I was officially learning English and French. And then in high school, I decided to start a new language, which was German, and today is one of my biggest working languages. So it was a it was a good decision.
Andrej Zito
Was it just curiosity?
Teresa Sousa
I don’t know. I mean, I just remember being a huge language nerds. offensive term, I remember me and my best friend at the time, we would just hang out in the afternoon. And we would buy German magazines and try to translate the interviews. Because we were into this band or, or this actress or whatever. And we just wanted to understand what was going on. So yeah, I’ve always been like this huge language geek. But actually, I started, I started working at a software company in the international marketing department. This was my first job. And I was travelling a lot going to trade fairs and trying to sell software, basically. But this was very important to see, because I was hired because of the languages because they needed someone who spoke foreign languages so that we could go to the trade fairs and speak to people potential customers. And this was interesting for me to see how translated content and how everybody needed to translate their content, because there was so many marketing materials and some so much stuff that people really needed to communicate between different markets. So that was quite an interesting experience. And it was before I got into the localization industry, per se, after that, I worked as a project manager for about 10 years in a translation company in Portugal. And it was only after about 10 years that I decided to become to go freelance. So that was the
Andrej Zito
that’s quite an interesting thing to me. Because I would say that since you had this passion for languages since the early age, and you were translating stuff that you would just jump into the translator role right away after graduating, but it took you like quite a long time.
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, well, I got into the into the industry quite early, but not exactly as, as a translator. It was a, I was a project manager. But the thing is, I actually fell in love with pro with project management as well. And I learned a lot and it was very useful once I transitioned into the freelance. You Yeah, all those project management skills were very, very useful, actually.
Andrej Zito
Some are, I would say maybe a lot of our students actually go the other way. They are translators like their whole life. And some of them feel either I don’t know, burnout are very curious about something else, or they feel threatened by AI. And they want to do something more secure. And the thing that project management is the one but in your case, it was quite different.
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, you use the word secure and I think that was important because I don’t know if it’s cultural or something but at an early age, I was already looking for stability and like this full time job and something because freelancing In Portugal is quite scary the taxes on it and all that and the instability of it all is, is a bit scary. So yeah, at the beginning, it just felt more safe. And then I really started liking it. So do you
Andrej Zito
remember the driving force behind the change? Were you bored with project management? Or did you feel like the calling back to being a translator and translating stuff? Or what was the reason?
Teresa Sousa
It’s actually a bit dark, I don’t want to depress you. But no, I lost my father in 2012, and he was always motivating me to intrapreneurship and to go work on my own and whatever. And I also wanted to have some flexibility, because I wanted to feel like if somebody else gets sick, I can manage my time and I can be with them and whatever I don’t want to be trapped in, in a full time job where I have this schedule, I want to have more freedom. And you know, after 10 years, you just start thinking and you know, corporate culture and all that can be a bit exhausting. And I just thought it was like it was time for a change. It was like a hair, a new haircut, or changing. It was time for a change. And I just went for it. And it went very well. Actually,
Andrej Zito
were you scared?
Teresa Sousa
I was yes. I was super scared. Because you know that then you have responsibilities. You have all those bills to pay. And it’s it’s pretty scary to to leave a safe job and go freelance. But I don’t regret it. And actually, I started working immediately. And I haven’t stopped since I was pretty lucky. I I must admit, but yeah, it’s scary. It’s very scary.
Andrej Zito
Did you have a rough start? Maybe, let’s say the first year or did you have clients from the very beginning?
Teresa Sousa
I did. I always had clients, honestly, because I was I really wanted to work. I really wanted to work. So I started looking everywhere, connecting with everyone just accepting everything. So I always had clients. I haven’t always had the right clients. But I always had clients. Yes, that’s true. In fact, I think I went in for too much. And there was a time where there was really too much and but well, it was a learning curve. But yeah, honestly from the beginning, I’m, I’ve I’ve always had work and and clients. Yeah,
Andrej Zito
I noted down from our first intro call that you went from 70 to seven clients. Yeah. Was this related to you focusing on SEO translation?
Teresa Sousa
Yes, I would say this, I mean, I’ve been cutting down gradually. But I did at one time have because I have my system for all my clients. And at one time I was working, I mean, not always with this 70. But I had 70 active clients. And it’s a lot, it’s a lot of processes, a lot of different people a lot of different subjects tools, it was just a lot. It’s true that at a given period, I had a team helping me I created a kind of a boutique translation agency, because I wasn’t really being able to cope with everything on my own. So I did that. But I’ve been cutting down gradually, at the moment, I’m really, really demanding on the type of clients. So I take on. So yeah, they really need to be aligned with what I like to provide and niching down to SEO translation and localization was a very big, it’s, it’s a good filter. So yeah, definitely was was important.
Andrej Zito
I’m very curious about the cutting down of clients, because I guess many people struggle with the opposite of to get clients. If you were I don’t know if let’s say we are creating a video for YouTube, how to cut down clients, what would be your tips in the video that you would share? What was your process?
Teresa Sousa
For me, it was very important to find out my values, what’s important for me, and I actually did some work with a coach, let’s I don’t think she she really identifies but to put it to the more simply. She was helping me with this because I was very close. I felt like I was very close to burning out. So I really went for a little bit of support. And we did this work of finding out my values. And for me, I started seeing that it was really important to have creativity to use my creativity. So that immediately rolls out, machine translation, post editing, technical translation, well that and then it was important for me fun is a very big part of my life, I need to have fun. I need to feel motivated to get out of the bed in the morning. So I really needed to be happy working at many mental health is also very important for me. I’ve struggled with anxiety pretty much all my life. So everything that makes me nervous makes me sad, or whatever I just been trying to filter out. So yeah, finding out about my values. What I really what’s really important for me was groundbreaking. Are you
Andrej Zito
having fun right now? Oh, yeah. Yeah, really. But explain to me like the fun part when it comes to clients? Is it the content that they sent to you that it’s fun, fun to translate? It? Maybe doesn’t have to be funny, per se, but maybe it’s somehow fun to translate it? Or is it also working with the PMs from the clients that they can be fun, they can send you boring stuff, but as long as the PMs that you’re working with are fun that it’s okay.
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, I mean, the content doesn’t need to be funny. I’m translating serious content, sometimes. But yeah, like, like you say, working with the PMs like feeling that people have a sense of humour they can. This is very this very important for me that there is a communication. One thing that was really helpful was that I created a rule. I do not reply to messages that are not directed to me. So you know, that kind of, you know, hello, vendor. Hello, whatever. Yeah. No, I really, I need to have a person on the other side. And yeah, this human connection side is very, very important to me, but just having fun. I mean, I realise fun is important in my life, because I like comedies, I love stand up. I love funny people, people really have to need to have a sense of humour to be in my circle. So yeah, this was really important. And it doesn’t mean that I’m translating funny content, but I need to feel good. And I need to feel motivated by it.
Andrej Zito
Would you like to translate some fun content? I would like to translate for Did you ever translate something that was fun? The content itself?
Teresa Sousa
Oh, while I do a lot of transcreation I actually so sometimes I really need to think out of the box. But the strangest job I had, I think it was trans creating a children’s song. And that was fun, but it was exhausting. I got traumatised, it was about ponies. Until today. I cannot. I cannot see a pony. Yes, it was a very moody was it was very, very fun, very challenging. But yet, I think the important, it’s important to have a balance. Because creative jobs can be very, very exhausting. And this week is a good example. Because yesterday I was the whole day working on a four word slogan. Thank God, my husband is also a translator. So he understands me because this sounds crazy for everyone. Outside of the industry sounds like what? But yeah,
Andrej Zito
can you share the slogan? No, no,
Teresa Sousa
no, it’s, I would have to kill you. It’s super confidential. Yeah, but it was. It was challenging.
Andrej Zito
Well, that brings me two more questions, but maybe I’ll save those for later. So let me start talking about the SEO translation. What is SEO translation about? If I’ve never heard the term or maybe I heard about it, some people talk about it. But I have no idea what SEO translation is?
Teresa Sousa
That’s a good question. Well, I think it’s the kind of umbrella term and it’s, it’s getting quite popular in our industry. But if you think about it, we’ve been with translators, we’ve been translating websites, all our lives, I mean, since the beginning of internet, but we translated them blindly, like we would treat them as we will treat any other type of content, we would get Word files or XML files, or HTML or whatever. And we would just put them in our translation tool, and I mean, translate and not even considering how they would be how people would read them. What was their purpose? What was behind the source content, the original text that was written because there’s a whole strategy there. There have always been this strategy, even though it’s always changing, and it has changed a lot in in the last years, but there’s always been this kind of strategy and its purpose and it doesn’t reach us when the content comes to us that there’s no clarity from what’s behind it. So as your translation is trying to do this translators are getting interested on the all the behind the scenes, all the backstage work that goes into creating online content. And once we get this clarity, and we understand why this was written like this, we can then put that into our target text. So yeah, pretty much.
Andrej Zito
So is it really just about giving more clarity to the translators? That’s what I understood.
Teresa Sousa
Yeah. It’s about clarity. It’s about understanding the process. It’s about understanding the strategy, understanding search engines, even. I mean, we’re all searching the internet. We’re all Internet users and consumers. So it’s even interesting to understand how we are being I don’t want to say manipulators, what I’ve said it’s my search engines and, and all that. So. Yeah, unfortunately, like there’s there’s a lot about clarity, a lot about strategy and putting all that into place. In the final translated text,
Andrej Zito
is there any difference between SEO translation and SEO? localization? Yeah, well,
Teresa Sousa
SEO translation is kind of an umbrella term, like I said, but I think at this point, it doesn’t even make sense not to say localization because it’s always localization because we are working with Arline content. So there’s a big, big part of localization, I think we use both terms. Like it’s switching, switching them up. But they basically I would say, it’s more correct to say localization. Actually,
Andrej Zito
no. When you mentioned the clarity thing, does it mean that the client plays a huge role in making the SEO localization successful? Like they need to provide enough information to you? Yeah,
Teresa Sousa
I would say that’s the clients role. The client plays a big part in this, the more we know about the strategy, who the ideal client is, this is so important sometimes to have an idea of the client persona, like, who are we trying to reach? It’s even interesting sometimes to imagine a person to give it a name to know their age. What do they like to do all that? It’s, it’s so much, it’s so helpful when we are writing, because we can just visualise. So yeah, the client reefing, the client brief is super important. And the more data we have about their goals, what do they want to achieve with the website or webpage? It’s really, really crucial.
Andrej Zito
I’m going to actually ask for clarification, because, at least from my research, like the whole thing, likewise called SEO is that the translation is adapted or focused on optimising the results from the search engine. But from what I’m hearing, like the clarity could technically be applied to any translation, right? Or maybe like in marketing translation in general.
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, I mean, every every type of digital content can be optimised because anything can be found in Google in Google search results page. I’m talking about Google. But we can talk about other search engines. But I usually refer to Google. But any kind of content that you put online can be found, so can be optimised and our goal is always to get to that wonderful first page. Because we know that nobody’s going to the second I mean, sometimes it might go to the second or the third. But then, I mean, we we lost them. So we are just with SEO, we are trying to make the content as appealing as possible to search engines to the machine, but also to readers because one thing depends on on the other it’s kind of cycle.
Andrej Zito
You also mentioned the word strategy, it’s important to know know and understand the strategy. What do you mean by that? Because even for me, like the general word strategy could be many different things. So what does it mean in context of SEO translator? What do you what kind of information are you looking for to get from the clients?
Teresa Sousa
Well, one thing we notice, client clients sometimes sometimes have two different ways of doing things. They create a website in one language for example, English, which is a very common language and then they they have it translated into other languages or they initially think about the website as a multilingual websites so they are Korean. writing it and they know they want to have the website in several languages. And this is already very demanding. And it requires a lot of vision and a lot of cultural knowledge, a lot of research, when you are launching a website in several languages, you need to treat each market very individually and do a lot of homework and research before starting to create content, finding keywords, thinking about the the end client, which can be very different from market to market. So all this work, before you start even writing the first sentence, all this work is like it’s crucial, I cannot think of a better word when this is when this is well done. The all the rest will, will continue will flow the right way.
Andrej Zito
When you mentioned about the buyer personas, I understand what you mean by that. But let’s say I don’t know Microsoft, and I create the buyer buying persona for I don’t know the new x box, you know, like the gaming console. Would you ever be tasked? Or would you expect the client to give you a local buyer persona, like maybe to localise even the buyer persona? Or would you create it on your own, just to instead of I don’t know, you’d being a John, you would create a no manual or something like that, just so that you can work better?
Teresa Sousa
Well, in my case, since I work with a relatively small market, it’s it’s easier because I can characterise kind of a persona. Yeah. But I like to kind of restrain myself because SEO is such a big topic that if you dive too much into it, you we will lose you. So I try to stick to the language part of SEO. So when I think of strategy, it’s important to to know about strategy, but I don’t like to be to even consider becoming an SEO strategist or an SEO expert. My My role is to make sure that the language has an SEO component, and not the other way around. Let’s say but so usually the clients and specially a client like Microsoft or big companies, they do have a whole team of specialised people like SEO strategists, SEO experts, and they do have a knowledge that we I mean, I myself cannot perhaps even start to comprehend. But on the other on the other hand, I have some knowledge that they do not have. So the ideal scenario is to have like a kind of a whole team where the linguist is involved as much as possible in the process. But there are some some parts of the strategy that are better left to the to the strategists.
Andrej Zito
So okay, let’s say Microsoft comes to Theresia. What are the special parts of the project that you need to translate besides the content? If we’re talking about the optimization, you mentioned something about keywords? I am going to say that I maybe have an idea of what that is, but maybe for people who don’t know what keywords are, maybe can you explain that?
Teresa Sousa
Well, keywords are a big part of SEO. And they are different. There’s a common misconception, there is a difference between what the users usually type on the on the search engines, which is usually some kind of nonsense for like whatever comes to mind, and we just type it and miracles ly searching engine replies gives us the answer we are looking for. There is this, but this is the basis of it all. I mean, we need to know what the users are searching for. And then we need to work on this and and find the key terms, the keywords that are describing the product or the service and that the user the user will relate to when he finally gets into the page and he sees those terms and this will give him the idea. Okay, this is what I’m looking for. So I’m this is a good result. So yeah, finding these terms. These key words is a big part of the process. And we as translators, we are working. We are helping out either by localising them if the client has found out the right keywords for English or German or for their language and they say okay, we use these keywords so we need you to localise it into your target language. And, of course, this is not a literal translation process because sometimes the product as a different way of being mentioned in another language, the users just refer to it in some other way. There’s a big cultural part here of cultural knowledge is very, very important. Or we are also doing keyword research where the client just describes the product describes the service, and we are the ones suggesting the keywords. So this is a little bit more complex, a little bit more strategic work, but both services are being asked to translate. When you just
Andrej Zito
do the localization of the keywords, would you then always double check if those terms are actually being searched? Like, is there is there a huge difference between doing the research on your own and just localising it? Or do you always have to make the research to kind of like double confirm that what you localise is actually being used?
Teresa Sousa
Well, whether you’re localising or researching, there’s always the need to check the search volume, which is the number of people that are actually typing this, or something similar in the search engine. So there are specific tools for that, where we can check this search volume, and we always have to do it. So even though if we’re localising we need to come up with an equivalent term in our language, but we need to say, Okay, this is actually being searched, there are 100 or 1000 people searching for it every month. The difference between localization and research is that for us translators, it’s always very comfortable to have a source. And you know, in a research project, we are just staring into the openness into the emptiness of the universe, there is not like a source text. So it can be a little bit more scary. There are some translators that also do content writing, work or copywriting. But there’s always this fear of the blank page, you know, when you just open a Word document and like, Okay, so with risk with keyword research, there’s a little bit of this complexity where the only source we have is the client brief, which is, of course, very helpful, but we need to go out there and just come up with, with the suggestions ourselves. So yeah, this is the difference.
Andrej Zito
Can you give me a use case, because I can only assume in, in which case, a client would come and ask for a keyword research without first doing the research in let’s say, the source or English language. But like I mentioned, I can only assume so I’m sure that you have better examples, like in which case, would the client do this without doing the research on their own first,
Teresa Sousa
in which case they will do localization?
Andrej Zito
No, in which in which case, they would just give you a project brief, but they wouldn’t have done the keyword research being the source language.
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, I remember one example. And this usually happens when the client has some kind of urgency to put everything out there, there is no time to go forward with the English and then wait for the other languages. And a very specific case, when this happened was during the pandemic, where all the a lot of brands needed to adapt to everything that the world was needing at the time. And I remember working with sports brands, and they wanted to create a new page on their website. And it’s a huge brand, they have a lot of languages. So they wanted to create a new page specifically for people that wanted to work out at home. Because a lot of people were working out at home, the gyms are closed. So they developed a special line of clothing equipment to for you to wear at home. And we didn’t know how much time that situation would last. So it was the pandemic and if you wanted to benefit from from the situation, it needed to go out all at once. So all languages at once. So in this case, and since it was something new, because before the pandemic probably I’m not sure I don’t have specific data to give you but probably there weren’t a lot of people searching work from home exercises to do at home and with the pandemic. It was like an explosion. So, but it was very specific. So you really needed to know the culture, the users, the consumers and try to put yourself in their shoes and think how would I look for it? So it was it was quite an interesting To see all that unfold, and how the client had this sense of urgency and just went for this approach of asking us to do research.
Andrej Zito
So when we’re talking about the research, and I hope this is not some trade secret of your own. And if it is, we can refer people to your online course, to find out more. But you mentioned some of the tools. So what are the tools that you use for this artists to or specific for translators? Or is it what people would normally do if you’re trying to do SEO in general?
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, there are a lot of tools, SEO tools, there is one big one, that’s Google Keyword Planner. So that’s a free tool that Google offers to all their users. And it’s technically free, you can get some data out of it, you can enter a term and you see how many people are looking for it, but it will give you a range. So it will tell you something like between zero and 1000, or between 1010 1000. So it doesn’t really give you anything, unless you have an ad campaign going on, and you have a paid account. Apart from that there are some some tools, they are usually paid tools, and they are usually quite expensive. Personally, I use Ubirr suggest that was created by Neil Patel. For me, as a freelancer, I think it has a kind of a cost benefits, it’s kind of a good ratio. It’s not that expensive, but there are some that are more more expensive. But they they’re pretty much user friendly, they are easy to use, they give you a lot a lot of information that for us as translators, it’s not that useful. But but there are lots of them. Ubirr suggests there is a H refs, it’s very popular also in the industry, mangles keyword finder. I mean, there are lots and lots of them. And there are always new tools coming up. But they’re not that difficult to, to learn how to how to use and you can also use it from, from a business owner perspective, if you have your own website, if you’re a translator, or a freelancer or wherever, and you have your own website, you can use it to improve your your own SEO. So they’re quite it’s a good investment.
Andrej Zito
I think it was cute when you call it Ubersuggest. I think it’s Uber, right? Uber ever. Sorry. From a German like, yes,
Teresa Sousa
you should. I’m completely in German mode. This week, I’m actually reading a book in German also. So I’m really very, very German. So yeah, I pronounced that you were it’s probably
Andrej Zito
worse, I would say probably the school bus, which is one thing that I was curious, because I tried Uber Suggest what what are the options for you as a translator? And I’m going to be more specific with the question there. Can you get data for certain markets? Or do you look for certain language? Let’s say you’re doing SEO translation into German? Would you look for German? Like as can you? Can you look for it as a German as a language? Or do you look what people search for in Germany versus Switzerland versus Austria?
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, that’s a good question. Personally, I need to keep an eye on that. Because our biggest we have a very similar market, which is Brazil. And there is a lot more content in Brazilian Portuguese than in, in Portugal in European Portuguese. But yeah, it’s important to choose, for example, Uber suggests lets us choose the country and the language. So you can search if you are looking to translate this website into German, but it’s supposed to be launched in Germany, the consumers that you want are in Germany, it might be different from Switzerland and Austria. So on that case, I don’t think there is a kind of a neutral German the same way there is not a neutral Portuguese as much as the clients keep asking me about it. But yeah, you always have this this opportunity to choose the country and the language because there can be differences. Yeah. When I
Andrej Zito
was using these tools for for my own stuff. I know that one of the metrics that you can get there is the competition, I believe. So So volume is one thing and competition is Another thing, how do you take that into consideration?
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, it’s actually usually one of the requirements from clients. They want search volume, and they want the competition level or the difficulty level. What does this mean? Sometimes the keywords with the biggest search volume is not always the best one, because and I always give this example, for translators, for example, if you’re a freelance translator, and you’re creating your website, and you think, Okay, what’s the keyword and you think translation, translation is the it’s not because it’s, it’s too vague. And there are so many pages that are trying to target it, that it just if you try to target it, it will get lost in the in the crowd. So this is, you need to find a balance, this is actually the biggest challenge to find something that it’s really descriptive. It’s what people are searching. And not a lot of people are targeting. So this is actually the secret the challenge to find this balance,
Andrej Zito
if you want more about magic Teresa’s course. But what I wanted to ask, yes, my question was, what if the client actually asks you just to localise key words, and you find out that those key words didn’t consider this balance? Like they are creating a content for keywords that are super crowded? Would you just follow what the client wants? Or would you try to open their brains?
Teresa Sousa
Yeah. Well, as translators, we always had the job of educating the client. Because even with simple translation, sometimes clients don’t understand that we only want the best for them. Sometimes we try to advise them. And but there are to say
Andrej Zito
that that’s what translators want. I thought it would translate is only one this higher rates.
Teresa Sousa
Well, one frame brings another, I think, yeah, that’s true. But usually, we want clients to get results. And we want them to because I mean, if the client is successful, we are I mean, it’s our content that’s helping them. So and with SEO, there’s numbers play a big part in it. When companies are investing in SEO, they want to see the return on it, they want to sell they want to see the sales going up, they want to see more visitors more traffic, they want to see something. And sometimes they are too set in in their own way. So we need to try to show that, for example, for me, this happens a lot. They try to put Brazilian keywords and people are looking for it. So yeah, but they are looking for it in Brazil. So if you say this to if a Portuguese reader finds this word, it will sound weird. It’s not written to us. So this is where we come into play as as linguists, and this is our added value. I think I
Andrej Zito
think you mentioned this earlier, we are optimising the content and the translations for let’s say, Google or other search engines, but at the same time, we want to make it nice and readable for the humans. And I’m not sure how are you going to answer this? But how do you find the balance between these two? Questions? How much time do you have?
Teresa Sousa
Oh, my God? Yes, it’s it’s an equal parts, I think. But I mean, if I have to choose one, I would say right for the humans, because the humans are teaching the machine. When you click a certain result, you search for something and you click the results. And then you stay there, you read you interact with the page, you don’t leave immediately you click on a button you share something, there are ways of tracking this of course, search engines practice, these are all part of the the algorithm. So we are actually teaching the machine so it’s not really smart to enter it’s very easy to get obsessed with SEO and just keep like facing it like a kind of a game. And you’re just trying to get away and get those little points SEO extra points. But if you focus and for us, it’s it’s fairly easy to focus on the reader restaurant letters because we are writing and we are just trying to to create an appealing text. So If you focus on the human, the results will will come. So yeah, there’s there’s this balance. But yeah, let’s let’s not forget that we are writing for humans, at least for now.
Andrej Zito
Yeah, that just made me think about it that it’s kind of like a chicken and egg problem. Like, you want people to discover your content, and they do it through the search. But then you want them to like it. And if they like it, then the search engine picks up on that, and then it ranks the content higher. Yeah, well, that actually, well, I’m not sure if you know all the details about the algorithm, I guess, well, we don’t know how the algorithm works. But that just got me thinking like, maybe like, initially, you write it for the SEO? And then maybe over time, maybe you change it? I don’t know. But
Teresa Sousa
yeah, no, it has changed a lot. Like I said, at the beginning, I started working for a software company, and I was at international marketing department. So we had, like, the SEO experts at the time, this was 20 years ago, as much as it pains me to. So SEO was very different at the time, if we had a kind of a key words, and we would just repeat it in the text, we will trick the machine something like that, in very simple terms, this would kind of work but nowadays, this isn’t going to fly with, with the readers because we immediately feel like we’re being tricked, even if we read the text and it’s overly repetitive or like it’s off putting, so we just search for for something else. So yeah,
Andrej Zito
but now that you’re talking about the, the algorithm, how do you as a translator, SEO translator, keep up with the changes? Or can you even do that somehow?
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, I do. I have to I have to keep up, especially since I have my online course. So I’m, I keep updating it to make sure that students get the most updated information. But honestly, like I said, it’s very easy to, to get obsessed with SEO. So I just try I follow a lot of blogs, usually this tools, the SEO tools, they have specific blogs, and they’re a good source. For me, I like to I like to go there and keep up to date by reading them. And also because I’m I’m personally interested in it. And also since I have my own website, I like to be kind of up to date on all this. But it’s important to always remember that we are focusing on the language side and on the reader and all that because if not, SEO is a big technical component which I I’m not qualified to even talk about it. So I just I tried to yet keep up to date but not dive too much into that part not to lose my my soul.
Andrej Zito
Yeah, Teresa, how exactly what do you do with the keywords once we have them?
Teresa Sousa
Yes. So finding the keywords is like 50% of the work. And then I would say the other 50% is actually using them in the text. And you can do that either by creating texts creating content from from scratch or by translating the original website what happens in this case is that the client tells you okay, we need to translate this web page and we want you to insert the keywords a given number of times, so that it will be interesting for the for the search engine. So we need to find natural and I cannot stress this words enough and natural sounding way of weaving the keywords in the target text and also creating or translating the content in a way that it will answer the user the users questions. So we need to understand the product we need to understand who are searching for it What questions do they want to see answered? What would they like to find out so this is the human part and then we need to put the keywords and but the keywords are also for humans and for and for them. It’s of course for the machine for the search engines but it’s it’s also for humans because it’s related to what people are actually searching. So when we see this these terms as as users we we feel like okay, this is what I was looking for. That’s what that’s what makes it so good result. Ultimately,
Andrej Zito
you said that you mostly create the content from scratch And again, I would like you to explain to me maybe some use case from the client side, does it mean that they don’t have the English content? Or does it mean that even if they have, they would still prefer you to create it from scratch? And what are the what are the pros and cons, I can assume that it’s going to simply cost more than translating, right? It depends.
Teresa Sousa
Both things can happen. Sometimes the client has the source, but they just prefer that you create content from scratch. They prefer that you do copywriting or content writing, for example, when the client has a blog. And they have, they want to have a blog for each language. And they just come up with different topics. And they say, Okay, we want one article a month, or five or six articles a month about this topic. And they just give you the information about what they want. And we create the content from scratch, or we translated, but sometimes it can be actually can be more cost effective to just create content from from scratch. Yeah, you can actually because if it’s if it’s a very different market, for example, and we are we have the translation, but the final product will be so different, we need to translate created a lot. In the end, it’s pretty much the same effort in terms of time. So yeah, and the end result can end up being more natural, if it’s really created thinking about that market and that consumer. So yeah, both both cases happen, actually.
Andrej Zito
Do you think that this creating your content in different languages from scratch? Do you think it has, let’s say, future, or potential?
Teresa Sousa
I would say so. Yes. Or we were talking about
Andrej Zito
there’s crossed?
Teresa Sousa
If we’re going to think about artificial intelligence, and
Andrej Zito
didn’t mean to go in that direction? Because I know that you mentioned that you don’t want to talk about it. But I mean, like, in general, like the you see, companies may be choosing this approach, because I don’t know it gives the translators more creativity, and they in the end come up with something better than if it was just translated.
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, I think for me, it’s a very interesting approach. Actually, I’ve, I’ve done it from my, from my own website, because it takes a little bit of time. I mean, from from the client side, if you want to have your content translated, you need to create it. So you need to create something first. Whereas if you just ask everybody to create content from scratch, it eliminated it takes that initial job off your hands, I’m thinking more about small businesses, actually, because these are my currently these are my type of clients, I don’t really work with very, very big companies. So when I think of small to medium businesses, it can be an interesting, it can be a smart approach, actually, to just give the content writers the freedom to create content from scratch to their languages. And they are not stuck trying to follow that initial that structure that you created from a market from one specific market, and may not translate very well into into others. So yeah, you can be a smart investment actually hoping that the machines will not take our jobs away.
Andrej Zito
I’m thinking about something because I have some project in mind, where I was thinking of doing something which actually might be in your area, because it might be related to fashion. And I never shared this with anyone. So maybe we’ll cut this, cut this off. I don’t want to go in too much into details, but maybe try to explain to me, if I’m a small business, how do I evaluate if I should create content in English first, and then translate it versus asking different translators and also like English copywriter to create something from scratch for each language?
Teresa Sousa
Well, it depends on your budget, first of all, because sometimes what small businesses do is that they focus on one market, and then they do a kind of market research. You can have a look, use an SEO tool and searching different markets if users are searching for your product or your service. And you might be surprised to see that specific market there’s a big clientele there’s a big number of people searching for it. So that might make sense but from a small business person Active, we need to be a little bit more conservative. So initially, companies don’t usually go for 10 languages at the same time. They just focus on one market and maybe two or three other markets. But it’s important to do this kind of market research and see if people are are interested in it.
Andrej Zito
You said that you don’t have any big clients? Would you like to have one? Or are you purposefully not working with them? You can also choose to not answer,
Teresa Sousa
I want to plead the fifth. No. Usually I prefer smaller. I mean, I do have one or two clients, they’re quite big, they have 1000s of employees, but nothing like Microsoft, like you didn’t mention in the beginning, nothing like that. Because then all my all my requirements will be lost like this kind of human connection. And usually, they also have very big volumes of content. So me, myself, just working by myself, I cannot handle it. So it wouldn’t even be a viable situation. So yeah, now for the moment, I’m happy with the small to medium
Andrej Zito
keywords, we talked about keywords a lot. How do you get them? How do you use them? Is there anything else when it comes to SEO translation? Besides the keywords,
Teresa Sousa
I think writing skills are very important, even more than equally in equal parts to research skills and to cultural knowledge, I would say it’s good to get a little bit out of that translating mindset and getting to writing mindset. That’s pretty important. Because sometimes you really have to steer away from the, from the original content, and or even stare at the dreadful blank page. But the sooner you start getting out of this comfort zone and just trying different things and just pushing yourself, it’s it’s quite an interesting learning curve. And in the end, it will help you with simple translation as well. Because you are more focused on the reader and just trying to be more
Andrej Zito
appealing. So how would you? I mean, what would you advise to people who want to maybe go from translation, like a general translation into SEO translation? Besides the writing?
Teresa Sousa
Besides the writing? Yeah. Well, one thing that’s quite interesting is to create your own website, and just make all the mistakes. I know I’ve I’ve done a lot. Creating my website was one of the first things I did when I started freelancing. And it was quite a learning experience. And it was very challenging. And there were a lot of doubts, and but you have some freedom to try stuff. And this was actually what triggered my interest in SEO because I wanted to be found I didn’t only want it to have like a digital business card with my name and phone number, whatever. I wanted people to actually find me. So I tried a lot of different approaches. And I’ve changed it a lot over the years. And it’s a good it’s a good training to do. Of course you can you can learn about it. There are lots of lots of resources, resources, where you can learn about it. But yeah, just getting interested in the topic and just trying different stuff. It’s a good first step.
Andrej Zito
And when we were talking about, you know, like the emphasis is on the writing. And you know, when we were talking about the importance of writing, do you treat copywriting as a different skill than, let’s say general writing? And if so, is copywriting important aspect for SEO translation?
Teresa Sousa
Yeah, well, there are these two terms. It’s a little bit like translation and localization. Copywriting It’s usually more associated to with advertising and more kind of aggressive marketing campaigns, like creating a slogan or a whole marketing campaign. I’m usually more comfortable with content writing, like creating long form content, like blog articles or web page content. So yeah, I treat those as as two different services. And it took me I use I usually say that I have a four step four day process to write an article and at the beginning, the first three days were was me having fun panic attack. And the fourth day, which was the actual writing? Now, it’s a lot more effective. The first day? Yeah. So yeah, it can be, it can be challenging, but it was definitely. Because if we’re trying to run away from the machines, they keep, they keep catching up. But if we try to run away from them, we need to find something that really is differentiators. From from something that a machine can do. And the more original and the more creative we we get? Maybe it gives us a little bit of advantage, I think.
Andrej Zito
So do you think that niching down maybe from a general translator into SEO translate through slug translate, SEO translator is one of the ways how you can say protect your future,
Teresa Sousa
maybe niching. Down is, is complex. It’s scary, because always feels like you’re shutting your door to something. But the thing is, I don’t want to get too like spiritual or something. But I’ve, I’m a recent believer in manifesting, you know, when you start, you work on something that you love, and you’re like, Yes, more of this, I want more i This is I wish I could only do this. And I don’t know the universe listens or something like this. And all of a sudden you start or the word gets around that you’re you’re good at this specific niche, or, I mean, the word gets around. I mean, we work hard to get our personal brands and connect and get the reputation SEO thing. And it’s an SEO thing. Exactly. So yeah, it’s I think it’s important to niching down Yeah, it’s, it’s important, it’s scary, challenging. But you can start by realising what you don’t like sometimes it can take a lot of time just to find out what you like. And sometimes it’s easier to start to see, okay, I don’t like this. Never again, like, no, it goes into my never again, list, and all of a sudden you have like a specialisation and you’re, you’re on the right path. And you get like a reputation and and you generally just feel happier with your work, which means you produce better work, hopefully. So yeah, I think it’s it’s the right way to do things. If it’s protects us. I’m not sure. I hope so. We live in uncertain times, I would say
Andrej Zito
that is true. Yes. Always uncertain. That’s the only certain thing that is certain. There will be changes, but maybe to stick with this spiritual theme. Well, maybe not so spiritual. What kind of people do you think are a good fit to be a co translators?
Teresa Sousa
I mean, I think there are, there are a lot of types of translators. But definitely, there is this type where you only like to translate. And you don’t even like to do project management or marketing or, like you, you face your your work. Like if you’re working in a company like Nina house translator, or you get that request, and you just translate. And this is absolutely fine. And there are lots of excellent professionals that couldn’t give a crap about marketing themselves or chasing new clients or whatever, I would say that this type is probably not not very, a very good fit for SEO because you really need to do a lot of things that are not translation related, even the type of events, the type of people that you follow that you connect with. It’s very, very different from the usual translation industry. Network. Yeah, you need to have a kind of intrapreneurial ship, be have this kind of mindset that you want to keep learning and keep finding out new things and be ready to step out of your comfort zone. That’s that’s pretty important. Yeah. Is there
Andrej Zito
anything else that you want to add to the topic of SEO translation? No, I mean, it’s something that we missed.
Teresa Sousa
We could speak about it for hours in our book.
Andrej Zito
Yeah, maybe you could but I’m ready to go. If you think there’s Yeah,
Teresa Sousa
yeah. I think it’s important to specially if you if we are using it to ourselves, to our business, it’s important to keep it sustainable. And I say this to you because I sense that you are starting a new Your business, don’t get too obsessed with SEO and numbers and results. I know that when we we try something new, we want it to be successful, of course, but just keep it sustainable because it can be. I’ve had stages in my life where I wanted to redo my whole website and just keep stacked creating content every week, a new blog article, blah, blah, blah, and we can easily get very tired. And so it can be a painful process. So it’s important to keep things reasonable and sustainable.
Andrej Zito
Alright, thank you. Now let’s talk about Theresa salsa. What are you curious about right now, besides SEO?
Teresa Sousa
What am I curious about?
Andrej Zito
Okay, new hairstyles?
Teresa Sousa
I’m curious. stuff. That’s true. Well,
Andrej Zito
yeah.
Teresa Sousa
Changing your hairstyle can be a way to do some self care. I’m very focused in my health, my mental health. Like I said, I’ve struggled with anxiety for pretty much all my life. So I keep trying to find ways to set boundaries, especially in my work. And I have done a lot already. This is a different person than the 2019 or 2018 Teresa. Yeah, but I’m pretty focused on improving my mental health. I’m very interested in anything related to animals. As you’ve seen, I have a dog I’m very interested in, in finding ways to live with animals that are comfortable for us and for them, like a kind of animal psychology and all that that’s just a personal interest of me. And I’m very interested in fashion. Interior Design, anything. Lifestyle. Let’s put it like this. And yeah, that’s pretty much that’s a tough Mr.
Andrej Zito
There any psychology behind picking the dog that you have right now? And the psychology behind picking the dog that you have, right? Oh, my God,
Teresa Sousa
no, this was a huge mistake.
Andrej Zito
For doc I hope he doesn’t listen to this podcast, or she?
Teresa Sousa
She knows no, yeah. I’ve had two dogs. I’ve we’ve recently lost one. But I’ve had dogs for oh my god, nearly 15 years. And they’ve taught me a lot. I’ve learned a lot from them. They were they were challenging dogs, both of them. The other one was a Jack Russell. That’s a difficult log and this one is also but they they taught me to be patient. They Yeah, they taught me to wait. And they’ve taught me to set boundaries. Yeah, they were very important. They taught me to set time aside for them set time aside for the things I like for the people. I like to do what I like to do so yeah, I’ve learned a lot with my dog. This is why I’m putting but they were very challenging. So this is why I’m so interested in dog psychology. Apparently. So yeah, I was
Andrej Zito
gonna say that wait until you have babies but no.
Teresa Sousa
Everybody says it’s worth I usually that’s not part of my it’s not part of my plans. I’ve never wanted children actually. I’m child free. I like to use the word child free. Nothing against I love babies, but it’s not just in my plans. But I Yes, I truly believe it’s, it’s a lot more challenging.
Andrej Zito
If I can ask about the anxiety because you made some improvements there and I guess a lot of people could be still at your earlier stages where you were before Did you manage to identify the triggers?
Teresa Sousa
Um, my biggest enemy was me actually, I think it wasn’t it wasn’t so much the external triggers. It was just me finding out that I needed to prove something or I just needed to work myself to death to be valuable or something like that. The having trouble saying no. always expecting people to be happy with me or towards like this people pleasing kind of personality but it just comes at time where you you need to set some some real boundaries and just find out your non negotiables. You know what I mean? Like this really needs to stop happening. For example, when I created my course, I was really excited. And sometimes the roll from excitement to toxic. It’s very, it’s like it’s a very thin limits, and you’re just excited. And all of a sudden, you’re working weekends, you’re working nights, my husband is catching me in the middle of the night, like, what are you doing? It’s not what it looks like. So yeah, you need someone to really bring you. Look, look, it’s too much, you really need to stop and you need to find your non negotiables. For me, it’s like I need to have the time to if a friend calls me or my sister calls me, I need to have the time to pick up the phone and talk to them. I need to work out do some exercise, I need to spend time with my dogs. I need spend time with my husband. I don’t work weekends, I don’t work nights. So these are my non negotiables. And once you do that, you work with the with the rest. So yeah, that was already a long path that I’ve that I’ve made. I’m getting there.
Andrej Zito
But this do feel like you need to please the people around you or did you? I don’t know. I don’t know where I’m going with this
Teresa Sousa
lesson bliss, I would say age helps a little bit. For sure. I turned 40 last year. And actually one of the smartest things I did was I gave myself a three months holiday. Just the holiday, no sick leave no, nothing just like I’m not doing anything. It was like a gift. I was at a place where I could do that I had already worked a lot and saved enough to do that. So it was a conscious decision. And it was very eye opening. It was nothing very, once again, very like a spiritual journey or anything. But I just was able to rest and not work for three months. And that was nice.
Andrej Zito
explained it to me. How can a freelancer shut down for three months? Yes. What did you What did you do with your clients? Did you just tell them hey, wait, wait two or three months?
Teresa Sousa
I’m not gonna lie, I lost a lot of them.
Andrej Zito
Okay, okay.
Teresa Sousa
It was a very good way of niching down.
Andrej Zito
Step one, take three months, okay.
Teresa Sousa
If you can wait, you can wait, if you can. It’s true that usually I’m not the only Portuguese linguist working for my clients, even though it’s small businesses, small to medium businesses, my my clients, but usually there’s someone there’s a there’s a backup. So for some of them, we just stopped collaborating. But now in hindsight, I can see that it was it was a good thing, because now I really have a healthy religious relationship with my calendar. It’s not always super, super busy. So in terms of work life balance, it was really great. And the thing is I have the clients I have at the moment are all 100% aligned with my values, the type of work I like to do the level of human connection that I need. So yeah, I’m I’m at a pretty good place. Right now. I don’t want to ruin it. But yeah, having someone like, clients, having someone else to take over for me was made things easier. But I also warn them with a lot of time in advance, like I’m taking I’m feeling very tired. And before this turns into something like I need to stop for a year, I’m going to stop during the summer. Also during the summer months, it’s always more quiet. So it was okay. Actually, it’s it’s, it seemed like the end of the world when I started thinking about it. But then I mean, it happened it was one year ago and I’m still here. So it was okay.
Andrej Zito
Did you somehow explicitly communicate your values and expectations of your clients to your clients? Or is it just that you niche down to the ones that naturally align with your values?
Teresa Sousa
Well, I started giving preference to those if I had like, two new requests See, and I identify with the client more than I identify with the other one, I will just tell the second one I wasn’t available, and they will probably go to someone else. So it was this kind of Yeah, preference. But now with new clients, I’m, I am a little bit picky. And I tend to see some red flags. Right from the right from the beginning rates are a great filter. I tell them my prices and they start. Well, that’s, that’s a good way of ending the conversation right there. And then, but I do yes, actually, I have a welcome document that I send to, to all my new clients. And it pretty much states. Everything I just said, like my values, when do I work when I don’t work? Which type of services? I don’t do. So it’s very transparent, right from the beginning. And yeah, this is our choice.
Andrej Zito
Do you think that every translator should have a document like that, like, Hey, this is who I am? These are my values? Or do you think it’s, I don’t know more appropriate for you? Because you are, at your level of where you are, like you are more senior more experienced, more established? I don’t know, what do you think
Teresa Sousa
I totally understand how hard it can be for a new translator, or someone that is just starting out to have this kind of AI at the beginning, I will take everything that clients would send me. So this was a long process of until I got here, a long, painful process. So I totally understand that it can be difficult at an early stage. But you need to have some boundaries. You need to have some some non negotiable. It’s important to understand your non negotiables at an early stage, but you can keep changing it adapting as you as you go along. And yeah, but everybody should have some type of non negotiable.
Andrej Zito
What were you explain this to me? What were you doing for the three months when you didn’t work? Oh, my God, because? And the reason why I’m asking is, look, first of all, I cannot imagine myself doing that. I think I would just feel like a complete waste of time. And the reason why I’m saying this is because you mentioned earlier that you’re trying to find and do the work that you love. So in a way by taking a vacation, you’re in a way not doing the things that you love.
Teresa Sousa
True. I mean, there is things that I love in the professional field. And there are things that I love in my personal life. So I was doing those. I slept a lot. I discovered napping is my favourite, my favourite new activity. I did sleep a lot. Honestly. I read a lot. I wrote a lot. I’m a big fan of journaling. So I journaled a lot. I spent a lot of time with my dogs. It’s one of my favourite things. Yeah, I did a lot of organising. I’m a kind of organise organisation, freak. So I did a lot of organising in the house, which made my life easier a lot easier when I got back to work. So yeah, I have really nothing exciting. It’s pretty much it was pretty much this. It was a new experience for me. And honestly, if we were having this conversation two years ago, and you will tell me this, I was like, oh my god, I couldn’t ever, I could never spend three times that’s a huge waste of time. It didn’t feel like it at the time. And the fact that I called it and I’m offering a gift to myself. I’m turning 40 I’m taking a sabbatical. So okay, I’m just not doing anything for three months. And not just okay. It was a nice experience.
Andrej Zito
One of my friend who actually kind of looks and sounds like you, which is weird. You may well, you mentioned that you listened to Diego. Right. So I’m talking about Daniela is right hand. Do you know about her? No, no. No, you don’t. But yeah. Totally like talking to her. So she told me because what I do is I share my weekly goals when it comes to to localization Academy, I share my weekly goals with her. And she she many times tells me tells me you should take a vacation. And she tells me that you know, like taking a distance from work can like open your mind or you can come up with some new ideas. So that’s where my question is heading. Like even though you You weren’t doing anything about work when you came back? Did you have some new? I don’t know, idea, some new approach to work. Did you realise something during the three months that you didn’t have to work?
Teresa Sousa
Not really, I would expect me to do that. Yeah, no, because I, I’ve had some, some ideas for new projects or new approaches or something like that. Usually when I’m on holidays, and I just switch off. Well, not totally, apparently, because usually I think about work. And it’s true that getting some rest might give you some, some new ideas, but not this time. Really. I honestly think I was really exhausted. And I, I needed to really rest. So no, but I did have something exciting, planned for the end of those three months, because I went to, to Portugal to my old college, actually, to give a presentation about SEO. So I had this kind of light at the end of the tunnel, like, Okay, I’m gonna race and then I’m gonna do this. And it was a nice way to is, is backing into work. So yeah, I just went, I flew there. And I came back. And I was, again in the, in that mindset of doing stuff and coming back to work. Did you already
Andrej Zito
have your course before you did the presentation? Or was it? Yeah, I have
Teresa Sousa
my I launched my course I started working on it during the pandemic, actually. Because I had free time. I thought maybe I should create a an online course. And I launched it in 2021. Actually, yeah. So two years ago. So yes, since I launched the online course, I’m usually invited to give presentations in universities or translate for translators, associations and all that. So this was one of those cases, it was nice.
Andrej Zito
What’s something that people seem to misunderstand about you? Ah,
Teresa Sousa
I was just telling my, my husband today or yesterday that I gave someone a tip. I don’t know. I think it was on LinkedIn or something. I just gave them a basic taper. And people say, Oh, my God, I wish I was so organised. You seem to be so organised and you think everything through before you do it. No. Just forget about my mind is a complete chaos most of most of the time. I mean, I’m kind of organised. But not I think I tricked people into thinking, maybe this is a kind of reversed impostor syndrome or something like that. But yeah, sometimes I seem to give off this impression, and I couldn’t disagree more. But I think I’m good at tricking people into thinking that.
Andrej Zito
All right, so my notorious question, what do you think is wrong with our industry?
Teresa Sousa
I have no idea what is wrong with this industry? I think there is still a big gap between freelance translators and agencies. I see myself and recently, I posted about it somewhere and it got a lot of traction. I was comparing the replies I got from translation agencies that at the beginning of my career, and they were like, Yeah, right. We’re sending you a free test translation. And once you do it, we will put you in our database, and we reach out. And now when translation agencies come to me, they are like, I’m interviewing them, they are looking for good professionals, reliable professionals. And sometimes they just don’t want to work with big agencies. So I feel there is this shift happening. And it’s interesting to lean into it and just go with it. Because there are lots of freelance translators that have a huge influence and following and reputation. And it’s interesting to see translation agencies starting to recognise this, I don’t really work. I only work with two agencies at the moment to arrest our direct clients. So I think it’s, it’s nice to see this happen, but we need to see more of it. We need to see more recognition, fair conditions and just basically respect to sum it up. We need respect in our industry. If we all just respect each other. I think it might be an interesting way of doing things
Andrej Zito perfect I think that’s the right way to end this interview so Teresa Thank you very much for your time thank you
