Hi there,

I wrote a big long post on another forum, but apparently it was dead and never got posted...so sorry but I'm going to try to keep it short....skip the background if you want.

1. Intro
I just received my B.A in Japanese, I'm going to school for the next few years to get a masters in accountancy. I have little money, just ideas and looking for opinions.

2. Background/inspiration
A. My time spent in Japan was filled with various activities. One was privately teaching English - long story short- I used a website that posted my own information and people contacted me directly for private conversation practice at a cafe. Was interesting.
B. I also had job offers (though I chose grad school instead) to teach English in Japan. Generally the board of education for different school districts puts out a contract, companies bid (or the BOE just uses the same company that theyve had good experiences with), and then those companies turn around and hire foreigner (americans/canadians usually) and pay them, then send them to teach at that school (as an ALT, assistant language teacher).
C. My brother gets independent contract alerts on his phone and he accepts/declines them whenever he wants. They notify him about things like installing credit card machines at a store. company is Onforce or something, easy to sign up and "work" for them.
D. I often hear stories about "oh my friend john always gets randomly contacted to translate/show people a good time/do whatever from random companies cause he lives in X and speaks language Y and he just kinda takes gigs randomly...etc..."


These events led me to...

3. The business idea
I was thinking, what do businesses really do if they need to go to (or come from) foreign markets to get over the language barriers? Some clearly work from there networks. Some hire people that speak language X so they can deal with the market, and some probably bumble through it. Would acting as an outsourcing company for bilingual people to do things like "show the group of Japanese businessmen a cool restaurant" or "Help 2 chinese men meet with their clients and explain XYZ" ?

Using the website idea like how I found teaching gigs (or better yet, they found me), letting people sign up and post their profiles - then getting contracts from companies (We need some guy in Seattle that is available on X days from 5:00 to 9:30 pm or something) , offering those contracts out and taking a cut for being a middle man....

is this a viable business idea?
I apologize for the lack of professional presentation - I just wrote another big explanation of all this and lost it so I'm not really in the mood....

I'm really just curious about the market?
Seems like low start up and upkeep - online website,
Market - Trying to find businesses that need to cut costs (dont they all?), or would like locals/natives to guide them, etc....could expand to tourism as well. Shit, I'm pretty sure my Dad would pay $100 to someone to get him checked into a hotel, show him some good local places, explain the history, communicate in his language....etc...finding locals here in America for foreigners or vice versa....


Ideas? Opinions? Problems? Already done?
I've noticed lots of outsourced translation sites, but havn't really seen much for the actual outsourcing of people in specific cities on independent contracts.