IF YOU CAN SPEAK ANOTHER LANGUAGE. THERE ARE REAL OPPORTUNITIES ONLINE.

Frank Baum once said that knowledge was the best and safest treasure to acquire. I learned that on my own. I was born in a small village in Vietnam called Viêm Xá (pronounced more like vee-em cha). When I started school, my parents wanted me to focus on learning English.

They kept saying to me that in order to be successful in life I had to know it. They were right, of course. But trying to learn English was difficult for me because I wasn’t used to the language at all.

My parents wouldn’t hear about it and soon enough English became my nemesis. During the holidays other children would stay out late and play. I would see them from my window because I was supposed to do English exercises.

Years passed me by and by the time I was in college I was fluent in English. But that wasn’t enough. I also had to prove it. So I started studying for the Cambridge exam. After many months and a lot of hard work I managed to take my Cambridge. I remember how proud I was and how I thought open doors would await for me at each corner.

One year later I had finished college and I was jobless. My Cambridge diploma was full of dust in my desk. I could talk and write in English perfectly but that was my only asset. That and the passion I had for literature. Unfortunately, nobody paid me to read books or to write poems in English. Finally, after many interviews and hours spent worrying I got a job at a call center. The salary was crappy, my boss was a pain in the ass and I hated the job. I would arrive home every evening feeling down and miserable.

One day, when I was looking for jobs on the internet, I saw a website for translator jobs. I wanted to check it out, just in case. I didn’t expect to find anything there for me because I only knew English. And Vietnamese, of course. But I doubted anybody was looking for translators with Vietnamese.

As it turns out, I was wrong.

There are many translators that know English and French or English and Spanish. But there aren’t so many that know Vietnamese.

I was shocked. Companies were really looking for translators with Vietnamese! And so my mother tongue which I thought useless outside my country was actually my biggest asset. It was my hidden treasure and my passport to a better life! And I didn’t even know about it.

I immediately signed up to the website and within a few hours I already got my first job as a translator. It was paid more than my monthly salary.

And I owe it all to two treasures: one that I acquired through hard work and one that I already had. Sometimes your parents really do know best.