A Good Translator Is a Good Side Hustler
[Hanshin Bank]
Deposit: 2,901,000 won.
“Ha...”
They had deducted the 3.3 percent withholding tax from the full 3 million won, and the rest had been deposited exactly as expected.
They’d said it would take about a week to review the translated manuscript after submission, but they’d sent the money in with impressive speed.
“At this point, this might be better than my salary.”
Of course, translation freelance work didn’t always have steady assignments, so it couldn’t quite match the security of a regular job.
Still, it’s more lucrative than I expected.
It wasn’t even a stretch to call it a second job rather than a side hustle.
Thinking back to how I nearly fainted when I first saw ten million won go out the door, this is almost funny.
It was a lot of money for an office worker like me, but I’d already made back thirty percent of it.
Now I’m actually curious what the next talent will be.
Still, the second ability had only just been unlocked, so expecting the next one already would be greedy.
And more important than that was this.
Foreign languages themselves are pretty damn interesting.
Right now, I wanted to use this ability more for translation and interpretation.
Buzzzz.
My phone rang.
The caller was Kim Dae-ri from Willow Publishing.
“Hello?”
-Hello, Seo-jun. This is Willow Publishing. We met the other day...
“Ah, yes. I saved your number. I checked that the manuscript fee came through. Thank you.”
-I passed it along to the management team, and it looks like they processed it right away. I’m glad.
Kim Dae-ri continued cautiously.
-It’s not that there’s a problem or anything... I just had something I wanted to ask you about.
“Yes, go ahead.”
-By any chance, do you have a translation team working with you?
“What do you mean?”
-Well, the work finished much faster than we expected.
“Ah, I didn’t have any plans over the weekend, so I just went at it once.”
-...Pardon?
I could practically feel the confusion pouring through the phone.
-Even so...
“I handled it alone. You don’t need to worry about the translation quality or copyright issues.”
-Oh, I wasn’t asking in that sense. I’m sorry if that came off badly.
“No, it’s fine.”
-The reason I called is that we were wondering whether you might be able to take on additional translation work.
“You mean a sequel to what I translated?”
-That too, and also some new works.
“It’s possible, but my regular job is about to get busy starting next week.”
The advertising industry had its busy season too.
When the weather turned cold, people went out less and spent less time on outdoor activities.
Which meant they spent more time exposed to media, and that made it prime time for advertising.
“I probably won’t be able to burn through it the way I did this time, but I can work on it whenever I have free time.”
Literally, it was a side hustle.
As long as it didn’t burden my main job, there was no reason not to do it.
-Ah, thank you. Then I’ll send you an email and call once I’ve settled on a manuscript.
“Yes, understood.”
***
It was a peaceful Monday lunch break.
A few of the tie-wearing office workers who had finished their gukbap and stir-fried pork were heading out.
“Mr. Park. Want to go smoke a cigarette?”
“Sounds good.”
They headed for the smoking area.
“Ugh, I’m so sleepy I could die.”
Back at the office, the nonsmokers drank coffee but still couldn’t fight off the blood sugar spike, and one by one they slipped into a brief nap.
It was 12:35 p.m.
There were still about twenty-five minutes before work started again.
Click.
I opened the email Willow Publishing had sent.
Transmission of the original text for Heavenly Demon Do-Do, Volume 2!
The second assignment had arrived.
Since I had time to spare, I started reading.
Something I’d realized over the past few days was that the ability to speak a foreign language at near-native level, not just conversationally, had a lot more advantages than I’d expected.
The most obvious one was this.
I can now access every kind of content.
Until now, movies, dramas, or books from China like Red Cliff or Romance of the Three Kingdoms had always needed to be translated before I could enjoy them.
But now I could watch them comfortably without subtitles.
Language doesn’t just let you communicate. It expands your access to information, too.
It was something I’d learned in college during a general education class, but experiencing it for myself made it real.
No matter how I think about it, foreign language ability is the best thing going.
Artifact appraisal was nice, sure.
But if I thought about everyday usefulness, this was much better.
Once the cooldown is fully reset, I should buy another foreign language.
English, being the most universal, was tempting enough on its own.
But maybe French or Japanese, languages I knew absolutely nothing about, would be good too.
“Oh, Mr. Kang?”
Then Park Dae-ri’s head suddenly popped over the partition.
“You’re reading a Chinese book?”
“It’s just something like a side job. I’m translating it.”
“Seriously?”
He widened his eyes in shock.
“Mr. Kang, you know Chinese too? I had no idea.”
“Well, it just kept improving because I studied whenever I had time.”
“Wow, that’s amazing. I’m jealous.”
Park Dae-ri’s eyes sparkled with what seemed like genuine admiration.
“The timing is honestly perfect...”
“Why? Is something up?”
“No, there’s this huge project that just came in from China.”
“Ah, I heard about that. Team One is handling it, right?”
“That was the plan at first, but when they saw the scale of the request, they decided to form a task force and run it that way.”
“Sounds pretty big.”
“Yeah. It even came in as a proposal from a public institution.”
“Really?”
“Apparently things have been a mess over there lately, with corruption and under-the-table money scandals. So to calm things down, they decided to pick a foreign company instead. We applied, and luckily we got selected.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Anyway, if you get into the task force, the performance bonus would be no joke.”
He lowered his voice and added with gleaming eyes, “And the task force leader is Han Su-a.”
Han Su-a.
I knew the name well enough.
She was the youngest manager in our company.
And last year, she’d even planned the piece that won the Korea Advertising Award.
She was basically a walking performance machine.
I’d heard her incentive pay last year was far higher than her annual salary, which really said everything.
“Don’t you like Manager Han?”
“Is there anyone in this company who doesn’t like Manager Han? She’s got the looks, the body, and she’s good at her job. Work with her and your results are practically guaranteed. Short of jealous people, everyone likes her.”
“Fair enough...”
Park Dae-ri said it with a coffee straw in his mouth.
“Man, I want to get into the task force too.”
“Why not apply?”
“They said you need to know Chinese, or at least understand Chinese culture to some degree. You think I can apply without that?”
He made a chopping motion across his throat as if it were a death sentence.
“I’d just become a planning slave. So what if it’s Manager Han? I’d just be shut in the office doing nothing but planning, planning, planning... I can’t do that.”
He shook his head.
“But you’re different. If you can speak Chinese, it feels like you could carve out a proper role there and work.”
And it was a request from a public institution, too.
Unless the task force really botched things, the results were practically guaranteed.
For other people, it was the kind of position they’d be desperate to get into.
“It doesn’t really appeal to me.”
“What? Why not?”
He stared at me as if I’d said something incomprehensible.
“You’re not going to apply for a spot where success is guaranteed?”
“If I go in there, it sounds like I’ll have to work my ass off.”
“Of course you will. There’ll be overseas trips and tight deadlines.”
“Then I don’t really want it.”
“...”
“You know my personality.”
I had no desire to keep chasing promotions until I became a manager, then a deputy general manager, then a general manager, then a director, and so on.
I wanted to go narrow and long.
My goal was simply to live with decent work-life balance.
The harder you worked, the harder work tended to get.
And if I needed money now and then, filling the gap with side jobs was much better.
“I like where I am right now.”
Start at nine sharp and leave at six sharp.
That was the virtue of an office worker.
I intended to keep living a peaceful life like this.
***
5:50 p.m.
The most exciting time of day for anyone with a nine-to-six job.
Today’s work is done.
I’d already written down the list of things I’d need to handle tomorrow.
Even so, there were still five minutes left.
I wanted to leave right this instant, but I had to endure it.
Looking beside me, the other team members who had finished their work were either running mobile games on their phones or staring at stock and crypto charts, waiting for six o’clock to strike.
Is investing really that much fun?
Looking at Park Dae-ri, he seemed almost pathologically obsessed, checking the charts every ten minutes.
And then the clock struck 5:57.
But the peaceful atmosphere didn’t last.
“Mr. Kang Seo-jun?”
An unfamiliar voice had come out of nowhere.
When I looked up, I saw a very stylish woman standing there despite being dressed in office wear.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Han Su-a, manager of Team One.”
She even held out her hand for a handshake, so I took it.
“Ah, yes...”
I was still a little dazed as I greeted her, and then she said, “If you have time, could we grab a coffee?”
“Right now...?”
I glanced at the clock without thinking.
Maybe she caught the look on my face.
“Oh, it’s almost quitting time. Then I’ll keep this short here.”
She got straight to the point.
“I heard you’re good at Chinese?”
“...Pardon?”
“I heard it from Mr. Park over there.”
“!?”
When I turned to look beside me.
“S-sorry...”
Park Dae-ri apologized in a tiny voice and looked away.
That lousy bastard...
But there was no point blaming him in this situation.
“I also saw your work sample, Mr. Kang.”
Manager Han continued in a confident voice.
“The ads you planned showed good sense, and you seem to have real instincts. You heard the news, right? We’re building a new task force. Want to join? I’ll guarantee the results for you.”
In truth, if I was being pulled into the task force, I didn’t really have a choice.
Even Kim Bu-jang, who had just come out of the manager’s office, seemed to know everything already.
“Oh, you two were already talking.”
Apparently the discussion about taking me over had already been settled, because he nodded as if it were all obvious.
“Mr. Kang. Go do well over there. If you work with Manager Han, you’ll learn a lot.”
“...”
Damn it.
In the end, when your boss says jump, you jump. That was just how office life worked.
If I was going anyway, it would be better to go on good terms. Thinking about future relations within the task force, that would help too.
It would also affect my evaluations and personnel reviews.
Fine. I’d think positively.
If I worked my ass off in that task force all through the fall, then I wouldn’t have to worry about performance in the fourth quarter.
“...Understood.”
“Good.”
Manager Han smiled brightly, clearly satisfied.
“Let’s talk about the details again tomorrow.”
She turned away with a look of contentment.