Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Dr. Jill Kushner Bishop, Founder of Multilingual Connections

Episode Date: June 15, 2023

No matter where in the world Jill is or what she’s doing – she’s always focusing on creating connections across languages and cultures. After studying and teaching internationally, Jill brought her PhD in Linguistic Anthropology to the corporate world, where she worked as a user researcher for Sapient and then oversaw Language, Culture & Diversity Programs for 100+ Chipotle Mexican Grill locations.In 2005, she launched Multilingual Connections to help organizations understand, engage, and grow their multilingual audiences. Their customized services include translation, transcription, multimedia localization, and bilingual research support services. When she’s not working, Jill is spending time with her husband and teen son, renovating houses, and trying to make her garden grow.Learn more: https://multilingualconnections.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-dr-jill-kushner-bishop-founder-of-multilingual-connections

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of Influential Entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us Dr. Jill Kushner Bishop, who's the founder of Multilingual Connections. Jill, welcome to the program. Thanks so much, Mike. happy to be here. Yes, I am interested in learning about your business because it's always fun just

to learn new things and perspectives and all of that. But before we dive into what you do and how you do it, what's your story? What's your background? And how did you become an entrepreneur? Yeah. So it was certainly nothing that I ever aspired toward. I was originally a high school Spanish teacher. I loved language. I loved culture. I love travel. And I wound up going for a doctoral program in linguistic anthropology, which was also something I hadn't planned on doing. But, you know, you make those little decisions and next thing you know, you're going in a different direction than you ever expected. But it gave me an opportunity looking at linguistic anthropology to explore language and culture and the connections between them. And so I spent a year in Israel doing fieldwork

among speakers of a dying dialect of Spanish that is spoken even today by descendants of the Jews that were exiled from Spain back in 1492. So for people like me, it was really interesting to see how people were using language, what they were doing with language, why they may or may not have been passing it on to their kids. And I had planned to continue in the academic world. And then I had an opportunity to work as a corporate anthropologist back in Chicago. And I took the opportunity thinking it would just be a temporary thing as I wrote my dissertation and then got back into academia. But again, you know, you start down a path and it doesn't always take you back to where you were. It takes you to a new place.

And so I started my company about 18 years ago. And even the company has grown and changed over time. Multilingual Connections is a Chicago-based agency that helps our clients connect with their audience around the world. We in about 75 different languages. And so the way that we did that early and the way that we do that now is really different. but it's been an exciting and interesting and challenging ride and fulfilling. A little frustrating. Oh, well, you know, like being that accidental entrepreneurs, which you just described

in the frustrating time, it's like, have you ever seen that graphic on social media where it's like, you know, here's what people think of, you know, how you succeed in business. And it's got this nice straight line streak to the top. And it's like, that's not what really happens. It's like a squiggly all around and up and down. And that's the way. that it always is. You need to have that clear picture of here's what I want success to look like.

But then when, not if, but when we hit that roadblock hurdle, you know, hiccup in the road, we got to just figure out how to go up and around or down or pivot. So what are some of those things you've learned over the years through maybe, I don't know, harder times or failures? Because guess what? We all fail. You either win or you not learn, but, you know, or win or you lose. I'm sorry, I said it wrong.

You either win or you learn, and most people think you win or you lose because it's not losing when you have a hiccup or a failure. Talk a little bit about some of those challenges. Yeah, and I love the example that you had of the squiggly line. And I wasn't sure if you were going to go with that one or the other one, which is my other favorite about entrepreneurship, where you're on top of a lion and people look at you as a business owner on top of this lion and think, oh, my gosh, you're so brave to run a business.

It's amazing. and the entrepreneurs on top of this lying saying, holy crap, how did I get on top of a lion? And I'm not sure that I'm not going to get eaten. Yeah. That's kind of the reality of the behind the scenes of life of an entrepreneur. Not always, but at times. And so, you know, for me, especially since this wasn't ever in the plans and it just started, I was on the wrong side of some office politics.

I was handed my voluntary resignation letter. And three weeks later, I started my business. But it wasn't, it was just going to be me. I had my stack of business cards and the yellow pages and my flip phone and my laptop. And it wasn't that I was ever going to be where I'm now, which is 25 employees around the world and working for organizations of all different types and 75 languages and across services. That is nowhere not even close to what I envisioned when I started the business.

And so what I've learned in particular, I mean, there's so many things I've learned, but one of the most important things is the important. of pivoting and examining your business as objectively as you can, which is really hard to do when it's everything that you do and that you are. I think it's hard for entrepreneurs oftentimes to separate their identity, their personal and their professional identity. And so for me, I was running a language training company that was the original focus of the multilingual connections. And so we were doing corporate language training. We were doing classes for adults, classes for kids. We had summer camps and before and after school programs and Chicago public

school strike camps and too cold to go to school camps and all kinds of stuff and translations on top of it. And it was like running for businesses at the same time. And I was trying to be a mom to a young child and a parent and a partner and a sister and a friend and a daughter and everything at the same time. And I realized that I couldn't do it all and do it well. And so I had to make the decision to pivot and close all of the language training programs that were so close to my heart and so close to who I thought of myself as professionally. And that was a really difficult decision, but it was absolutely the right decision for the business. And so that's just one example of many pivots along the way. Yeah. And sometimes you only

know that decision when you're in the midst of it and can go, something's not right. Let me step back and see how I can pivot. And you know what? A pivot is in a 180 turn and, ooh, I failed. And this was so wrong. So now let me try something new. Nope.

It's saying all these years I've been doing all of these things done, doing it well, learning along the way. But if I just tweak this and pivot a little bit here, it's just enhancing what you're already doing right. So I love how you notice that maybe those other areas might be near and dear to your heart, but maybe possibly it's not, you know, getting you closer to that full vision of where you want to go. Or maybe it wasn't as profitable as what you could be doing. So talk a little bit about how you then merged into then the corporate focus. Yeah. So it took a while. I saw the numbers.

I looked at the spreadsheets. I knew the truth, but it took a long time for me to be comfortable making that decision. And in retrospect, I wish I had done it a little bit sooner. But But again, I learn from it. And so I make decisions faster now, especially when it's about the health of my business. But each step has brought me closer to not success, because I think that's kind of a moving target. But it's developed the business and made us a better and stronger business. And so the work that we do now is exclusively corporate related. And so we do our most common services translation.

So we could be translating marketing materials, websites, legal contracts, surveys, discussion guides for market research, all different types of written contact. So that's translation. A marketing service that we provide is called Transcreation, and that is a combination of translation and copywriting for highly creative content like film titles or slogans. Then there's audio and video transcription for market research, for documentary footage, for e-learning, localization, software. We do subtitling in voiceover.

And just in the last couple of years, another pivot toward adding services has been adding on multilingual research services. So we do a lot of work in the market research industry. My background is as a researcher, and a lot of companies and research agencies or teams need bilingual and bicultural researchers that can facilitate interviews or folks.

focus groups as they're thinking about new products or new services or expansions. And so we've added that in about 25 different languages. And it's been really exciting to see the interest and the feedback from our community. I love it. So when I'm hearing that, here's what I think that I'm understanding. So correct me if I am wrong. Anyone could say, here's this text translated, thank you. Many people, you know, a bot can do. that. But what you are doing is saying, okay, but we're getting into the nuance of that local international area and we're going to really make sure that it's not only translated, but translated to where it makes the impact, makes the punch, the oomph that you wanted to in the

marketing and the whatever, like the, like you mentioned about a title to a film or whatever, it might be translated this, but boy, if we said it this way, it's going to really resonate with them correctly. Absolutely. You could go on marketing my service. because that's exactly what we talk about. That nuance is so important. And when you think about translation, it's part art and part science. And so the science is the technical stuff, the grammatical content, but the art part is what really makes something resonate. And so you could send something through Google Translate and it's better and better all the time. It's not perfect, but it's better. But you might get some of the science, but not the art. And so what makes people think

and feel or how do you allow people to express their authentic voices, their true opinions, their identities, the subtleties. That's really hard to do if you are not an experienced translator. And so we bring together translators from all around the world. We've got well over a thousand different translators because you also need not just a native speaker of the target language, but also of the region. Yeah, the culture, too. Exactly. So you're translating for Canadian French versus French spoken in Europe or in Africa. It's a different language, different dialect, different cultural nuance, different expectations, sometimes different grammatical or orthographic norms. So there's a lot to think about. So you really need to have the right people, the right technology to support their efficiency, the right editors to make sure that nothing was missed, nothing was lost in the process. So it is a very complex process.

It's kind of like redoing your house. You could find somebody to do tile and to do drywall and to do paint and to do every aspect of it. But how do you verify that each one of those does the job right? And then how do you coordinate all of the process? So working with an agency, whether it's us or another professional agency, we help make sure that the whole project flows, that there's the right steps at the right time and the right people. And you can concentrate on the other stuff that you do that's actually part of your job. Bob. Yep. You know, as a translator, I am excited to ask this question because it's something that I have always heard and it might be an urban legend or it might be a wonderful business case study because I've mentioned this in classes that I teach in marketing. And with your Spanish background, I think that you will either have heard this or can you give me a great insight. The Chevy Nova. Yes. You know where I'm going with that?

I do. Absolutely. So if that accurate, is that an actual thing? Because yes, Nova means don't go, can't go. What is the story behind that if there is one? Yeah, you know, I don't know the story in detail, but it's a perfect example of where brand names, you know, you might not be thinking of it in the moment when you're when you're creating them for your local market, but all of a sudden you take it internationally. And Nova means it doesn't go. So the Chevy Nova, who in Latin America wants to buy a car that's called No. No. go or doesn't go. And similarly, there's a car called puta, which means prostitute. You know, again, not great across borders. Or in, I think it's in the Middle East where there's a laundry detergent called barf. So a lot of things are created with a very limited perspective. And so even have a hint that you might be taking your brand globally. It's really good to do an assessment, have an agency work with, you know, the top 10 languages or markets, and have the translators review the words, you know, is there something that's word for word? Is there something that it might sound like and similar even if it's not exactly what the word spells out? You just want to make sure

that you're not shooting yourself in the foot before you even get to the, get to launch. Now, that's a really good point. So if you're a brand and you, you know, are in the United States, let's say, and you now are looking to expand internationally. So obviously now we need to convert our sales material and all these things. And so there's that. But is it an actual service that you would provide to say, okay, let's take a look at your brand, your product line, and let's run it up against where are you thinking about expanding to?

What are the countries or the languages? And is there some sort of chart matrices that you would send over to go, okay, all the ones in green are good to go. The ones in yellow are, you might want to consider this. And the ones in red, you know, there's no way. So is that something that should be done? And is that a service that you provide? Absolutely.

And absolutely. So that would fall under our linguistic consultant and consulting services. And so that's a case where we have, you know, bilingual, bicultural linguists who are available to consult with clients on a variety of different topics. And so it could be in market research and thinking about how to frame questions on a survey and thinking about, for example, here on a survey. on a screener, you might have a question about somebody's living situation. And one of the options is living with a child, you know, under 18. But in some countries around the world, 18 isn't the age of maturity and it's 20. And so you might want to think about the way that you phrase that, or it's very common in other countries to have people live at home until they get married. And so

maybe the question is living with an unmarried adult child at home. And so these are things that people might not be thinking of when they're writing a survey for a U.S. market in English, for example, but by having time with a linguistic consultant, they can think about, you know, how can we rephrase these, how is it going to be better received, what aren't we thinking about, what we should we consider. And similarly, on the topic of titles or names or brands, having them run through and really not just look at that word in isolation, but is there any way or any possibility that this word could mean something or be or sound like something that you're really going to regret after the fact. And then you might need to go to market with a different brand name for that region.

And that's a decision you want to make going in. Yeah, that's a really great point. So I tell you, there is so much more to just translation than you would think. And there's so many more applications. You know, like I just think it's so neat to think about, you know, from, you know, qualitative research to, you know, subtitles to videos and all of these things. I think it's just really amazing to think about. If someone is interested in learning more to see how this, this really deep dive focus in the corporate realm could work for them and maybe even uncover some opportunities

like, we just never thought of it like that. How can they learn more? And then how can they reach out and connect with you? Yeah, absolutely. You can find us multilingual connections by going to MLConnections.com or multilingual connection. Connections.com. Sorry, multilingual connections.com. And you can find me, Jill Bishop, on LinkedIn. And I'd be happy to chat. Whether you have something specific, you're just kind of curious and want to think about the future. As far as language and culture goes, I would love the opportunity. Excellent. Well, Jill, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you today. Thanks so much, Mike. I really appreciate it and enjoyed it.

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