Need help with work opportunities in light of lockdown

I have been doing it for a while and I had semi regular work from The Translation Gate, but used to be I was part of a team translating half million word documents but now everything is no more than 1000 words. Wonder what changed.

I had my work from Proz.com but that site wants you to pay money to get listed (you can still be listed for free, but your exposure is more limited if you don’t pay).

I tried 104 and have not gotten any jobs from 104. And truthfully 104 is a terrible site for serious jobs, I think they put poor/leftover jobs there. I bet 90% of all jobs are filled long before it makes it to 104.

Don’t a lot of people teach English online? I know my coworkers have their daughter take lessons completely online through TutorABC or something. Seems like you could at least find private lessons with a little effort.

I heard of this, but I don’t really have a platform to do this in. If someone can show me the door I’d take a look inside.

However I rather not teach because I am a serious introvert, and teachers I have seen are extreme extroverts (or are good at pretending to be one).

I’m not a translator so not familiar with the best ways at present for finding such jobs (I imagine there are threads on this?). I am an editor, but I never liked the freelance sites all that much either (too much hassle/wasted time bidding on individual jobs) and haven’t needed to use them in years.

Half a million words sounds like a lot though - I imagine the shift to ca. 1000 words is related to the demand for online content/short news articles. Probably hard to avoid that.

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Many content I did for The Translation Gate was either short memo released related to COVID, or medical receipts that needed translation for insurance claims, one of them was a series of student handbook that must be translated into Chinese for immigrant families by US school districts, etc.

Before I was doing video game localization, specification documents (which were quite long), and even teachings from a Rinpoche of a Tibetan Buddhist organization (or cult).

Don’t you need a license to busk in public places?

If I can get paid playing just random I-IV-VI chords, then great.

You also have to deal with clients. Some people can’t do this.

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theres millions of ways to earn a living in taiwan. pick one.

Right now dealing with people in person is not prudent.

I can deal with clients if it’s not “must convince indecisive client why they should pick me to translate their stuff instead of some other guy”.

Another thing though, with COVID rising busking licenses may not be processed, if it’s even allowed at all.

I read that more people are playing guitars because of the pandemic.

https://busker.culture.tw/taipei/cms/news/1651

https://newtaipeicitybuskers.azurewebsites.net

Monthly scooter rentals are cheap.

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You can’t deal with clients. You need to move away from client-facing jobs, coding or something, but I know you won’t get this.

I’ve seen thousands of buskers in Taipei, and most of them are really good. You’re not going to make anything banging out bad renditions of Hotel California and Knocking on Heaven’s Door on some street corner.

Did you visit the company that some poster recommended you some time ago?

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Rent a scooter. Start delivering Uber Eats/Food Panda. As others have said, demand is about to pop off for deliveries and they are going to need all hands on deck.

Honestly, in this economy if you can’t find a job that’s your problem. Plenty of work in construction to go around.

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Man, you’re wasting your energy.

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You can sign up to uber eats with a bicycle. Ubikes are cheap and abundant. You’d still make money and be in the shape of your life while everyone else gets fat from sitting at home.

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Yea about Uberats… I tried to sign up and they are not accepting my documents. It’s because I have a misdemeanor conviction on my record and I don’t know if this is something that I can explain to Ubereats and get that taken care of, or I am banned from Ubereats. It goes away in 5 years.

I thought of ubereats on bikes because I could just do some work, make maybe 800nt (which someone tells me takes about 2 hours or so on a scooter).

That’s what some of us do right now, overhead needs to be paid.

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I’ve seen people delivering on a bike and actually on the now dangerous public transport.

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