In 2007, I relocated from Brazil to Germany and started a specialised translation business focusing on Brazilian Portuguese in Rheinbach, near Bonn. Below – in the tenth part of an article series with which I celebrate 25 years as a professional translator – I will discuss my experiences and observations so far as a migrant entrepreneur in Germany.
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Work visa, indefinite leave to remain and citizenship acquisition
I came to Germany with a work visa, which I obtained after a 5-month processing period at the local German consulate, allowing me to work exclusively as a freelance translator and author. Right after arriving here, I converted the visa in a leave to remain, which I had to renew every 2 years. After 7 years, it became clear that going back to Brazil was not an option for me, so I applied for the Niederlassungstitel (German indefinite leave to remain, or permanent residency) to not have to worry again about renewing a residency permit.
When I found out that the eligibility requirements for the indefinite leave to remain were more or less the same as for acquiring German nationality, I decided to apply for citizenship as well. The most absurd requirement was having to attend a so-called integration course – even though I had German language certificates and worked as a sworn translator licensed by a German court. So, in order to grant me an indefinite leave to remain, the immigration office forced me to attend a 3-week long integration course, which lasted for 4 hours every day and was paid for by myself without any compensation for the loss of my working hours.
I obediently fulfilled the requirements and immediately applied for citizenship. Becoming a naturalised German citizen meant that I didn’t have anything to do at the immigration office anymore, nor did I have to follow absurd bureaucratic demands or pay renewal costs for an immigrant ID.
No discrimination as a migrant entrepreneur
In all these years living as a migrant entrepreneur in Germany, I’ve never experienced any act of discrimination – except for a short confusion related to my Arab family, as people here don’t always understand that Brazil is an immigration country, i.e. most Brazilians are originally from elsewhere, like my own family, which has multi-ethnic origins, including Lebanese roots.
Maybe that had to do with the fact that I already had good command of the German language when I first came to this country in 1996. For me, there was no cultural shock, because, when my plane landed in Frankfurt, I was well prepared in terms of local language and culture.
On the other hand, the reason why my experience was positive was certainly because I always worked with languages and, therefore – as it usually happens in languages – my work nagivated between two cultures, which made cultural adaptation easier. Migrants who work in non-language areas and don’t speak German well may have a different, not so positive experience.
Either way, migrant entrepreneurs are a population group whose size can hardly be overlooked: according to a study by the German foundation Bertelsmann Stiftung, 709,000 people with foreign roots were entrepreneurs in Germany in 2014.
Mind-set differences
I worked for clients located in Germany even before I moved here, so I didn’t find it difficult to adapt to the German business mind-set. What did annoy me, however, was how European countries differed from one another in terms of payment practices.
In the first 5 years after I arrived here, I still worked for translation agencies in Austria, Spain, Italy and the United Kingdom, and in every one of such countries there were, for example, different payment terms and, unfortunately, also different interpretations for the word punctuality. Payment within 45, 60 or even 90 days – as well as overrunning them several days or weeks – was absolutely normal for clients from those countries, whereas in Germany one usually has to wait only 14 (direct clients) to 30 days (agencies) for any payment to arrive. Not to mention how different Germany is from the US (check payment, withholding tax) and from my birth country Brazil (no regulations at all regarding payment terms, more bureaucracy due to social security contributions).
At some point, I began to distance myself from complicated customers in other EU countries, focusing on doing business with local customers in Germany instead. Focusing on local business brings additional advantages, because the more international a translation business is, the more complicated it becomes to manage things like currency exchange, collaboration agreements and taxation. In contrast, doing business within the borders of one’s own country means less bureaucracy for entrepreneurs.
My entrepreneurial focus on local business has intensified since 2012, after I became a sworn translator. In the next article of this series, I will write about a very special kind of local clients: Brazilian migrants in Germany.
