New English File Advanced Workbook

1 READING

Read the text quickly and tick (/) the sentence that

 

best describes the reasons for Arno’s success.

 

1 He had a background in Internet marketing and a good education.

 

2 He was lucky with money and followed his instincts to invest it wisely.

 

3 He received emotional and financial support from his friends and family.

Christian

 

Amo:

 

the story of his success

It was at the tender age of seven that Christian Arno, founder of the online translation service Lingo24.com, put his first plan for making money into practice. His scheme was to buy penny chews and resell them to his schoolmates at 2p per sweet. However, the venture came to an abrupt end when one of the mothers found out about it and deemed it 'inappropriate'. Arno had to shut down immediately.

 

His next opportunity came during the year he spent abroad as part of his French and Italian course at Oxford. Despite lasting only two weeks as a language assistant in Pavia, northern Italy Arno was allowed to stay on with full board and lodging. This meant he had. a lot of free time on his hands, so he set up a website offering translation services with a friend,

 

Jos Shepherd. Although they didn't make much money, the business gave them both an insight into working online. That same year, Arno became financially more solvent when he sold some shares he had purchased for a huge profit of £15,000.

 

Back in Oxford, Amo finished his degree and decided to have another go at his online translation idea.

 

He asked Shepherd to design a new website in return

b Read the text again and choose a, b, c, or d.

 

1 Arno’s first business venture closed down because a his friends couldn’t afford his products, b the teachers found out about it.

 

(ji) the parents didn’t approve of it. d the chews had passed their expiry date.

2 Amo went to Italy for a year

 

tj) 1° fulfil the requirements of his degree, b to set up a translation company, c to learn how to be a teacher, d to do a course at an Italian university.

 

3 Arno obtained a large sum of money during his year abroad a by translating financial documents.

 

b by investing in the stock market, c by working as a language assistant, by designing websites for a fee.

%

for a 20% stake in the business and went on to launch Lingo24.com from his own bedroom.

 

The business was not an instant success due to Amo's inexperience in Internet marketing. However, he worked hard and learnt fast, earning himself a reputation for speed and accuracy. After 18 months he had enough business to set up an office in New Zealand so that he could offer clients a proper 24-hour service. Soon after that Arno had another stroke of luck. One of his larger clients started spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on translations, so he was able to invest in more sophisticated technology. This brought in even more business and led to him opening yet more offices in China, Romania, and Panama.

 

Lingo24.com now translates into and out of more than 100 languages, and turnover this year is expected to reach £4 million. It has 100 full-time employees and more than 3,000 freelance translators. The company nowadays is a far cry from the rudimentary website Arno and Shepherd created in Italy, but that experience was invaluable in showing them the potential of their idea.

 

Arno's advice for others is: 'Seek out people you respect, who have done it before and have got experience and give you advice - but go with your instincts.'