Before becoming a “digital nomad” and a translator from English to French in 2010, I worked in a fair amount of different industries. My first work experience was as a teller at a local bank in my hometown as a summer job (two months per year over 2 years). I then graduated from university and started to work as a mechanical engineer for a French company manufacturing pneumatic marking machines.
I decided that this trade was not really for me (I couldn’t really handle the pressure – too young I guess) and moved overseas where I worked in hospitality as a hotel receptionist and head waiter during a couple of years before starting my personal venture in marketing. I successfully ran this business during 4 years, sold it and moved to Australia for some “extended holidays” in 2010. I started to meet a lot of interesting people from all around the world who introduced me to remote work and to translation agencies. I found a job in a farm which started early in the morning and finished early in the afternoon, hence giving me plenty of free time to work on the assignments the various translation agencies were giving me.
After two years working two jobs, I quit the farm and moved to South-East Asia where I’ve been able to keep taking care of the needs in French translation of my previous clients, but also to sign-up on several online freelancing platforms. After one year of moving around SE Asia, I decided to settle there and – in order to get a proper visa – enrolled in a local branch of Cambridge University to become a language teacher. I now hold a CELTA (highly recognized certification in English language teaching) and have been teaching to high school students since May 2013. I absolutely love this job: I find it extremely rewarding and it gives me a huge amount of free time to work on my translations.