Sonia Kampshoff

Welcome to Working with Languages, the podcast for language speakers ready to explore the range of opportunities involving languages. My name is Sonia Kampshoff. I'm a translator turned Google Ads specialist and a lifelong language enthusiast. Join me and my guests as we explore how they embraced languages in their careers and what working with languages looks like in the age of AI. Because finding the right inspiration can help you build or shift your career.

My guest today comes from one of Italy's best known places, Pompeii. Since her childhood, she remembers being surrounded by people of diverse languages and cultures. This is what sparked her love for languages, which took her across Europe before settling in Belgium after a degree in translation. After years of working as a freelance translator, she craved for a better tool where to collate all her invoices, quotes, fees for different project types, and all of the admin work that comes with freelance work. So she sat down with her software developer husband and created one. In this episode, she tells us about creating and launching a software, how being a software product manager differs from being a translator, and what her plans are for the future. Let's dive in.

Welcome back to the Working With Languages podcast. My guest today is Martina from Italy. I'm very excited for her to be here with us today. So first of all, hello Martina.

Martina Abagnale

Hi, thank you for having me.

Sonia Kampshoff

So as you know, the first question is the same for everyone. What is your favorite word or phrase in a language that you speak?

Martina Abagnale

Yeah, so my favorite expression is concho concho, which is a regional expression that we have in the region where I come from in Italy. So it's in Neapolitan and it just means taking life slowly.

Sonia Kampshoff

nice.

Martina Abagnale

Right. I always have to remind me that as a freelancer with multiple companies, you're always running around with all the things you have to do. So our house motto is Conjurón.

Sonia Kampshoff

Why does it not exist in every single language? We should always do that. Yeah, I like that. I like it very much. And I like the philosophy behind it. So you come from Italy. Can you tell us more about where you're from, your upbringing and all of that?

Martina Abagnale

Yeah, so I come from a very small village in the side of Italy, which everybody's going to know. It's Pompeii.

Sonia Kampshoff

Wow!

Martina Abagnale

super famous, and yet if you live there, it just is a tiny village with nothing. Outside of the ruins, there's not really much to do. growing up, I would see all of these different people, and all of them would speak a different language, and I could not understand them. So it just looked very exotic and just very interesting to be like, whoa, there's a world out there that must be different than here. So.

So pretty much I grew up there, like my whole family lives there. But then when I was 16, I studied for a year in Hungary as an exchange student. And that was eye opening. was like, you know, not only, of course I was aware that like, you know, a world existed outside of my tiny village, but then I was like, I can just, I'm allowed to go where I want. And like, I can create my space wherever I want. So after that, I ended up living in Belgium as well. And then...

The Netherlands, well, I mean, first the Netherlands as an au pair, Belgium to study, now I'm back in the Netherlands on a stable basis. I've been here for eight years already.

Sonia Kampshoff

Nice. I'm fascinated that you also did a school exchange to Hungary because it's quite unusual, isn't it? Is there some particular reason your school was affiliated with Hungary?

Martina Abagnale

No, it's like an international program called EFS and they offer a lot of scholarships, but like you kind of have to play this scholarship game. So, you know, like there's like a limited amount of scholarships. So if you choose a less, you know, glamorous country, there's a higher chance for you to win a scholarship. So I just created a list of like random places where I wanted to go and I won a scholarship for Hungary. I actually...

Like my top three choices at the time were Russia, India, and Turkey. And my parents were like, we're not letting you go to any of those three. So I had to change my list and add. I was only allowed to add European countries.

Sonia Kampshoff

Okay, I understand that. But I actually do remember when I did at university when I did my Erasmus year abroad, my scholarship, I actually didn't realize it at the time, but I went to the professor and I had a few questions. And I guess they were smart question because at the end of those few minutes that I talked to her, she wrote down my name and guess what, I got the scholarship. it is a bit, you know, sometimes it's a bit random how you get it.

Martina Abagnale

Yes, and like it makes no sense trying to optimize it because just the fact that you're going to be exposed to something different is going to be so enriching. So it doesn't really matter at the end of the day what it is, the thing is going to enrich your life.

Sonia Kampshoff

Brilliant. So what did you do after school? Did you first do the au pair or did you go to university?

Martina Abagnale

Yeah. So I graduated and then like every 18 year old, I thought that I could conquer the world. So I signed up for this university test, but I failed. So the university only had 70 spots and I was number 300. So I was like, well, I guess I'm not going to get in. And I had to figure out what to do for a year. So I ended up in the Netherlands as an au pair just to fill the year, just to do something.

But then while I was here, the first week I was here, I met the guy that now is my husband. So I guess it was meant to be. So I spent a year here. I really liked Netherlands. So when I went back to Italy to study at university, I decided to learn Dutch because it was an option because I studied at the interpreting school in Trieste, which is like a very famous university, but they have a limited amount of languages.

Sonia Kampshoff

I studied that too a few years before you. Yeah, had a few colleagues, quite a few colleagues who did Dutch there. But when you started university, I guess you had a bit of an advantage with Dutch because you already were there for a year and you knew the language already quite a bit.

Martina Abagnale

Yeah, I I did pick it up. When I was an au I'd either just spend the whole day with a two-year-old. I'm like, you could teach me a lot of Dutch. But definitely, you start recognizing the sounds and you start recognizing the written words. So definitely, I had an advantage. Yeah, I mean, yeah, it happened. My classmates were not happy the first classes because I knew all the answers. But eventually, it became hard for all of us. So it was OK.

Sonia Kampshoff

That's funny. Which other languages did you study?

Martina Abagnale

I studied English. So English was the language I got in with, then French and Dutch. And I actually, never managed to learn French well enough to actually work with it. So even if I have a degree in French, I am just, you know, I cannot save my life in French. Like last time I was in Paris, I was at the restaurant and I was like, I looked at the menu and I said, I'll have the chicken. And they were like,

Ma'am, there's no chicken on this menu. We don't know what to try to order.

Sonia Kampshoff

That's funny. So then after university you went back to the Netherlands or Belgium?

Martina Abagnale

Yeah. So I studied two of my three years of university. did in Trieste and the third one I did it in Belgium. It's not really an Erasmus. It's called the double degree program. So it's longer and you have to like do more exams abroad than you normally do when you do an Erasmus. And then I did my internship in Amsterdam, mostly because I already had a place to live there. So it was easy for me to just get.

An internship there, then just like I stick there. I was living with my boyfriend and I worked at a translation agency for a year and a half. And then when I decided that I knew enough of what was going on in the translation industry, I just studied for myself.

Sonia Kampshoff

Do you have any specialization?

Martina Abagnale

Yes, I specialize in financial translations.

Sonia Kampshoff

Did you do also financial translation when you were working at the agency?

Martina Abagnale

no, actually it was quite difficult to like break into the financial translation part because it's kind of like, you're gonna really see it. Like I worked at the agency for a year and a half and I felt like I have seen a couple of texts in total. It feels like like legal is the most common thing I used to do there. So I had to really like search and to find clients that would give me financial texts.

But like I've always been so interested in finance. So I would read a lot and I did like some extra courses by myself. So like I did a paid course for with an Italian Institute and I did a very good course in Geneva, financial translation. So, you you can learn about it, but then like finding the clients that give you the assignments that was quite difficult at the beginning.

Sonia Kampshoff

Who are your clients for financial translations?

Martina Abagnale

I mean, right now there are fintechs and investment funds. have a bank that I translate for. then like quite often nowadays, it's just like companies that need their balance sheet translated because, you know, they do business, you know, in different European countries. So like they are not really financial institutions. They're just like companies that they need their financial documents translated.

Sonia Kampshoff

Brilliant. So you have a lot of recurring clients that give you work.

Martina Abagnale

It's really a mix. feel like the companies always get spooked by how much it costs and then they don't really come back the year after.

Sonia Kampshoff

Yeah, I find that sometimes companies and people don't think about, you know, the time it takes to translate something even with translation memories and all of the help that you can have, but it still takes time and that, you know, and that costs, you know, I find that people sometimes forget about it. Yeah.

Martina Abagnale

And especially when it's not really their decision to have something translated. Like, you know, if you do a marketing translation, it means that the company is trying to break into a new market and they really want for that thing to work. But most of the time when these companies are asking me to translate their documents, it's just one extra annoying thing that I have to do before they are compliant. So like it is very, very difficult for them to see the benefit of spending money to do the thing. It is just like an annoying.

Sonia Kampshoff

Do you work more from English or from Dutch? interesting. Cool.

Martina Abagnale

Mostly from English.

This country, their level of English is so high that so many companies also in the Netherlands do everything in English.

Sonia Kampshoff

Well, that excludes then the need for any translation if everything is in one language. But I guess that sometimes it makes sense. if everybody understands it well enough, it makes sense because it speeds up things and cuts certain costs and so on. Interesting. So you've been working as a translator for quite a few years. And I know that you

scratched your own itch in a way and you now launched a new product, something completely different.

Martina Abagnale

Yes, yeah, I ever since the first month of being a freelance translator, I've been complaining about needing an easy way of tracking my work. And the good thing of that is that when I started out, it was during COVID. So I was doing all this complaining like five centimeters away from my software developer husband who gave in and he was like, I'll build something better for you. So we have built together this project management software.

And since last year, we have also like opened it up to new people. So the company is called Now Lemon Twist and it just provides project management and invoicing for freelancers.

Sonia Kampshoff

So not just Translate, as it's for freelancers overall.

Martina Abagnale

Yeah, it's basically for people that work for themselves and have a lot of deadlines. Because I feel like that is what we would be the most useful for, people that have to track different projects at the same time and have to keep track of different rates and things like that.

Sonia Kampshoff

Yeah, I think the different rates can be quite challenging because when using translation memories, you can have a lot of matches or similar words or identical words and then some other texts are completely different and completely new. So you have more work. you know, having a different fee happens very often in translation, but I guess it happens also in all other freelance jobs or industries that you can have. So that is very interesting.

And I never thought about it as an actual problem until you mentioned it, because generally I'm a freelancer as well, but I generally have a lot of ongoing retainer work. So, you know, it's easier to manage. But yeah, what's, what has the feedback been so far?

Martina Abagnale

Well, the feedback has been very good. I I feel like the translation industry is filled with very supportive people. So it's very nice seeing so many people that are following the journey and seeing what's happening. But then at the same time, it has been a very steep learning curve because I have never created a product from scratch. And this is also a completely different workflow than doing a translation. So it has been a lot of learning for me.

a lot of adjusting because I am working with another person, which is something I'm not used to because I've been a freelancer for seven years. But it's also very rewarding because, you know, it's a thing that did not exist. And now I made it.

Sonia Kampshoff

Yeah, it must be very satisfying.

Martina Abagnale

Yeah.

Sonia Kampshoff

So what are the challenges that you find you have when creating and marketing this product? What are the differences between what you do now in terms of work and being a translator? How do you approach the two?

Martina Abagnale

Yeah, yeah, I when I started, I really thought that I since I was good at marketing my translation business, I could just like very easily market this product to translators. I was like, you know, I'm gonna know the client and I'm gonna know the product is gonna be very easy. But it is like a completely different way of like, approaching the product because as a translator, I feel like we're all about

listening what the client needs and figuring out how to help them and how we can adapt ourselves so that we can help them. But with a product, I mean, started at the beginning, I was doing it. was like, we can build any feature you want and we can create this thing exactly how you need it. But then if 10 people need 10 different things, you're going to get a burnout, which is what I got last year, because it is impossible to make everybody happy. So it is more like.

It takes more time to figure out what exactly, like what's the bare minimum and what's the thing that's going to make the most amount of people happy. And also just presenting in a way that's like, you know, this is a problem you have and this is a possible solution. Maybe it doesn't work for you, which just means you're not a fit. Instead of just feeling like just because another person does not use your product means your product is not good enough.

Sonia Kampshoff

Absolutely. Absolutely. Do you have a lot of feature requests?

Martina Abagnale

Yes, we do have a lot of feature requests.

Sonia Kampshoff

That's nice when you know that people actually give you ideas, but also they want them so they are more likely to buy the software and recommend it on. It's so good.

Martina Abagnale

Yeah. I mean, we had like a whole phase of testing before we launched. So like I had been using it already for six months, but then of course, like there was just like the way I used it. So before we launched it in the market, let basically anybody that wanted to try to take off to try it for free for some months and just give feedback. And I kid you not the first five minutes that somebody was using it, it was like, why don't you just add a button here? And I was like,

This is genius. I've been staring at this page for three months and you have looked at it for five minutes and you have just massively improved. It's the wisdom of the crowd.

Sonia Kampshoff

That's good.

So what kind of freelancers do you have using it at the moment? Do you have translators, of course? Do you have any other freelancers from other industries?

Martina Abagnale

We also have some copywriters. I think just because translators and copywriters, like they are like a similar crowd. So that's why they have found it already. But like we're trying to expand it also to like graphic designers or social media managers, or as I said, like any person that needs to manage the work that they do by themselves. they, you know, people that have multiple projects with different kinds of rates at the same time.

Sonia Kampshoff

Brilliant. Yeah, I think that's a good move because even graphic designers, it's a fairly big market and it fits the same idea of different fees and multiple projects. As your translator, is it, at the moment it's available only in English, do you have any plans of having it translated in other languages?

Martina Abagnale

So the first thing that we made available from the start is that the app itself is only in English, but then the app allows you to create invoices to send to your clients, and those can be translated already. Because, of course, if your client is based in France, you don't want to send an English invoice. So anybody can just create their own template in whatever language they want. And then once we will have a more settled product, because now we are still working on it, and we're still adding features.

So eventually we're going to have like a stabilized thing where we will think about localizing it.

Sonia Kampshoff

Brilliant. What are the features that you have added more recently, and what are the ones that you think you will add in the near future that are most relevant?

Martina Abagnale

thing I'm most proud about, it's not super recent, but it is the thing that saved me the most time for sure in the past year, is a VAT tax report. So since I send all of my invoices through the software, it just gives me exactly the amount of VAT that I have to pay already cut down in the different categories. if I have different VAT rates, or I'm based in Europe and sometimes I work with other Europeans.

companies so that I have to do a different file called ECP, where I have to tell them every single VAT number. When I do a reverse charge, I also get like a very nice spreadsheet that shows me all of the numbers. So that is something that saved me, I think like an hour every quarter just by having it there. my, like my favorite thing of Lemon Twist is that we have this very nice button that tells you that.

You have finished a project, which has been my biggest pet peeve for the five years that I was forced to work with something else. Because like, I would have this list of projects and then I'll have to click three times to say that the project was finished. And I always thought like, what do you think is going to happen if I'm working on a project? Of course I'm going to deliver it like nine out of 10. I'm going to deliver it. You know, it can get canceled and then put on hold. And of course I want to have the liberty of doing it, but why am I wasting time clicking three times?

for this extremely basic thing. So that is another thing I'm very proud of. And in the future, like this year, we're working on allowing quotes so that not only you can send an invoice, but you can also send a quote so that you can also keep track of the amount of projects that you get to put on and then the things that eventually get accepted so that you can have a better overview of how your business is going. And in the...

Further future, would love to have a client scoring card so that you can figure out not just how much money you make, but how much you enjoy working with a client. Just something that I do by myself, but it would be very nice if the software could keep track of all of your scoring. over the years, you can see like this client is getting better, it's getting worse. Like they're not paying stuff on time or they're being very annoying.

Sonia Kampshoff

I never heard the concept of a client score. Of course, I also have clients that maybe I know pay sooner or later, or they like to pay always the week after the deadline. But I never heard of this concept. It's really, really good. So what elements go into a client score for you?

Martina Abagnale

Yeah. So what I do right now is I keep track of how fast they pay my invoices because if they start paying the invoices, like too much, like I like when clients pay on time, like you don't have to pay the moment as in the invoice, but if the payment term is 30 days, I mean the 31st day, they're going to get a reminder from me. Like I'm not a bank, like they need to pay me. So I always keep track of that. I keep track of how many back and forths there need to be before we actually can agree on something.

So the clients that have like 23 replies for one project, to me, it's like, you I mean, of course there can be like big projects, but if it's the kind of client that doesn't really have clear ideas on what's going on and I have to keep on like messaging them, it just means that they are not really like well-organized. So that is another thing that I keep in mind. Of course I see how much I make with them for per year. I try to keep track of how much I make per hour, although I'm not very good.

tracking all of my time, I must admit. And then I also keep track of how they react when I raise my rates. Another thing I do is that I message my big clients once a year, even when I'm not raising my rates, and I let them know like, I evaluated things, and you know, I really like working with you and the rates can be, you know, can stay the way they are for next year. So that I feel like whenever I eventually raise the rates, they

does not come as a surprise because it was like, last year she didn't erase them. So this year it's okay if she does it.

Sonia Kampshoff

That's such a good idea. I never thought about it, but it's brilliant. And I think probably an idea might be also to have a custom field because if you work in different industries, then there may be other elements that are specific to your industry or to your line of work. That's a brilliant idea, absolutely. And then you can prioritize acquiring clients in a certain way based on all the elements that you mentioned. What are your...

plans for the future more generally? Do you find that adoption is going well and you want to expand in Europe? Do you want to expand more internationally? How do you see that?

Martina Abagnale

I don't know. It feels like it's a bit too early to say because we launched last year at the beginning of last year. So it's only been a year and a couple of months. And I feel like it is such a delicate part of people's business because it's going to contain all of the information of their business. So of course, it's going to take some time for people to just feel comfortable starting using it. I we do have users, but I feel like we could be massive because it's such a nice tool that can help so many companies. So I really want to see.

where adoption comes. I was very surprised to see that we had like a US user that signed up last month because it's not like a region that we've been targeting. So it was very surprising seeing all of a sudden somebody signed up from Los Angeles.

Sonia Kampshoff

In what industry do they work?

Martina Abagnale

I think there was a translator.

Sonia Kampshoff

Okay. And so is it now, how do you balance now being a working as a translator and working on your software product? Do you do in terms of hours, which one do you prioritize at the moment?

Martina Abagnale

Well, I, the way I see it is that translation is still very much paying the bills. So like, have to make sure that like, do enough translation to be able to be my mortgage. but then like all of the, like the moment that part is done, I spend all of the rest of the time on lemon twist, mostly because it's like, you require still so many things because I do the marketing, I do the taking care of the clients and you're still brainstorming and creating new features. So there's like always like, there's so many things to do.

And I still get so excited about doing that. Because after five years of being a translator, I was like, I've seen this, I've done that, it's becoming boring. And now it just feels like I have this whole new challenge.

Sonia Kampshoff

It is exciting to create something new, something that is your own. Very exciting. And how is it working with your husband?

Martina Abagnale

I mean, I like it. I think he likes it a bit less. He has at times called me the worst manager he has ever had in his life.

I think it's because I mean, he comes from, he has 20 years of experience working in Bing corporations. So of course he's like, I'm part of a team, but I do my thing. And then I report to my boss and I am instead, I have never worked in a team. Like I worked in an agency, but like as a project manager, you don't really work in the team. You still have your assignments and you do them by yourself. So I have not learned the art of not being a micromanager yet. So I'm constantly being like, what are you doing? What are you doing? Like.

Can I see? Like it is ridiculous, but like at times I'm like, I want to see your fingers on keyboard to make sure that you're working.

So yeah, I've had to rein in that feeling. And I have to remind myself that most of the time, you first have to think about stuff before you do it. So it's not like it's not working. It's thinking, which is also part of the work.

Sonia Kampshoff

So I normally ask my guests also how they use AI in the private life as well as at work. How much do you use AI both in translation and also for your Lemon Twist product?

Martina Abagnale

So in translation, I sometimes use it just to like, I ask it to rephrase things when I feel like a sentence is kind of long, then I'm winding and I'm not really understanding all of the bits so that I can just cut down and realize, okay, there's this chunk of me that I have to include and these other chunk of me that I have to include. I find it useful to do that. When it comes to LeavenTwist, I mean, I'm not the developer like my partner is.

And we do not really integrate AI in our software because, as I said, it is the most important data about your company. And I don't trust AI next to my rates and next to my client information. So we're very much going to use it for that. But I do think he also uses it when he's trying to stress test an idea that he has, like, you know, what is wrong in this line of code so that he figures out if something is going to work before he starts implementing it.

And yeah, in my private life, I don't really use it for much. I mean, I know that people use it to write like the menu of what to eat in a week, but like, I don't think I would like any of these suggestions that AI gives me because I'm such a picky eater. I was like, I'm not going to the machine tell me what to

Sonia Kampshoff

Yeah, I don't use it for that either. I find it interesting when people, you know, put in recipes and it creates a shopping list, but that's not how I operate. It may be because I'm a foodie and I just want things to be done and cooked my way. But yeah, it works for some people. Is there anything else that you would like to say about your translation work or the Lemon Twist software?

Martina Abagnale

I mean, I think we've talked about why it started and we talked about the future. mean, of course, if anybody would be interested in trying it out, they can get a free trial on lemontwists.ing. I also have a newsletter where I talk about productivity and then I just talk about what's new at Lemon Twist. And you can also find that on lemontwists.ing.

Sonia Kampshoff

Brilliant. And thank you very much for coming. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you and see how people can have a career and then create something completely new based from that career that is different but also links up to what we were doing before. I just find it fascinating when people do that. So thank you very much for coming and telling your story.

Martina Abagnale

Thank you very much for having me.

Sonia Kampshoff

Creating something that solves your own problem is thrilling and also powerful because you are your own ideal client, which makes it easy to understand your target audience and what they want and need. Martina did just that. She solved a problem that she had and probably many more freelance business owners have too. And by doing so, she partly transitioned to a new career while keeping languages in the mix. I hope you enjoyed this honest conversation about

progressing careers in a different way. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the podcast on your favorite platform. And if you think a friend might be interested, do share this episode or the podcast with them. You can also subscribe to my newsletter. The link is in the show notes.