ProZ.com Blog | Jared Tabor (3)

Jared Tabor

Jared oversees Member services at ProZ.com. An ex-language teacher, he has lived and worked in Argentina since 1996. He has been with ProZ.com through the La Plata office since 2007. You can follow him on Twitter, @taboredinc .

Trends in the language services industry: A demographic interlude

December 26, 2022

Because everyone likes a nice chart or graph, right? Here we go.

Years in the industry

Respondents to surveys and other participants in this report are a relatively “mature” crowd in terms of professional experience. Almost half fall into the range of between six and eighteen years in the industry.

Surveys outside of the ProZ.com site indicate the percentage of newer language professionals may be higher than shown here, however, with 10% having been in the industry for just under two years, and another 10% in the 2 - 4 year range.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: Turnover and Attention Economy

December 21, 2022

You win some, you lose some

The percentage of people who are leaving the industry had declined somewhat by 2019. Just under 21% said they were planning on leaving, or had already left the industry. There was a small uptick in this percentage in 2022, to 23%.

Now, bear in mind that these percentages include people who are considering leaving but who have not yet left, and they also likely leave out some who have already left as well. In 2022, roughly 37% of freelance translators and interpreters reported knowing friends or colleagues who had left the industry in the past couple of years.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: The continued rise of the remote interpreter

December 19, 2022

There was probably a sort of Golden Age of the Interpreter, where technology had gotten good enough to support and facilitate an interpreter’s work, but where for the most part the interpreter needed to be on site. So you saw a lot of interpreters traveling here and there, near and far, to work at conferences, job sites, business meetings, court hearings, and so on. It sounds almost glamorous, doesn’t it?

Tech advances then reached a point where those plane tickets and travel expenses began to dry up, as it became easier and easier and more and more cost effective to bring the interpreter onto the scene either over the phone or virtually. Not only can remote interpreting be more cost effective, it can also be safer-- think of military applications, war zones, language support during epidemics, and so on. Smart phones allowed us to go mobile with a distant interpreter, and platforms geared towards finding and engaging with a distant interpreter began to pop up across the internet.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: The need for experts on tech applied to language services

December 16, 2022

In a previous industry report, we touched on the dynamic of machine translation and the translator, machine translation and the company or client, as well as the segments of freelance translators who were:

Embracing MT and MTPE
Diversifying within the industry
Diversifying out of the industry

As we saw a moment ago, some translators are getting trained or training themselves in the application of post-editing and dedicating at least some of their work efforts to these projects. Some translators are diversifying the services they offer within the industry, and others are transitioning out of the industry altogether. We’ll look at these last two groups in just a moment, but first, let’s look at this from a different perspective.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: Machine translation, part 2

December 14, 2022

Actual post-editing work (MTPE)...

Quotes from language professionals:

I'm training automated translation engines and I therefore know firsthand these need to be 'tweaked' to deliver proper suggestions.

I am used to post editing now more than ever, and that has been a significant contribution to the number of words I am able to translate per day.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: Machine translation, part 1

December 12, 2022

Machine translation and post-editing. Won’t it just go away on its own?

In order to look at machine translation (MT) here, we will use three different categories:

MT applied by translators,
MT applied by clients or others who are not the translators, and
Actual machine translation post-editing (MTPE) work.

Jared Tabor

26 hours of interpreter training added to ProZ.com Plus membership

December 9, 2022

26 hours of interpreter training has been added to the basket of goods, services and resources available with the ProZ.com Plus membership subscription.

As discussed in this year's language services industry report, many interpreters are getting involved in translation. And even more translators are getting involved in interpreting.

In 2017, ProZ.com began, through its partnerships, providing direct paid work for those in the remote interpreting world. Support, project management, and payments are handled by the ProZ.com team in order to facilitate this work and to keep up the quality and consistency of the service provided. In 2022, the average earning from this single channel of work was 2,791 USD among those interpreters who were working. The ProZ.com team intends to increase that average while increasing the incoming work and the number of interpreters who are getting work.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: Artificial intelligence

December 8, 2022

Artificial intelligence. Forget whether it's really intelligent, it's here. What is it doing?

Quotes from language professionals:

An interpreting contract was cancelled because AI was implemented to LIVE translate & subtitle a news show where I was working.

Technological advances are not only exciting, but greatly impact the development of our industry. We need to adapt and transform ourselves, since technology is dynamic as well.

I am not extremely worried about technological advances, on the contrary I am trying to specialise so that I can make them work to my advantage.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: What, me worry?

December 4, 2022

What concerns freelance language professionals most at the moment?

There is a lot to worry about, and everyone’s situation and career path is different. But there are recurring concerns that come up over and over in general among freelance language professionals. Most of the concerns themselves are the same, and most of them are shared concerns with freelancers in any industry, but by paying attention to changes in priority or prevalence it is possible to get a feel for what, if anything, is new.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: general industry trends

December 1, 2022

The events we've looked at so far probably took most of us by surprise. General trends in the language services industry are much less surprising if you have been in the game for a while. We can say that some of these trends have been intensified over the past two years or so, but for the most part they were all pre-existing. In general, we can say that:

1. Demand for language services continues to rise.

Content creation continues to grow exponentially,
Spending on language services will continue to increase,
More languages are being added to the demand in order to reach more people.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: Global concerns, part three

November 28, 2022

The Great Resignation, The Big Firing, and Other Epic Names

You have probably read terms such as The Great Resignation, The Big Reshuffle, The Big Firing, Quiet Quitting, and others which are commonly being thrown about nowadays, and which make for great clickbait in our news feeds. While the media coverage seems to focus mostly on these phenomena as they affect workers in the regular 9 to 5, it is important to keep in mind that they are also feeding into the pool of available freelancers in many industries, including language services. Many employees leaving their 9 to 5 jobs are going into freelancing; one estimate is that in the United States alone, 50% of the total workforce will be (at least partially) freelance by 2028. Having gone remote during the pandemic gave a large segment of the population a small taste of one part of the freelancing life, and most are currently grappling with remote work vs. back to the office. So now you have both necessity and desire fueling a shift to freelancing as a way of life.

Jared Tabor

About that one ProZ.com team member...

November 24, 2022

Some of you may or may not have received an email recently, related to the year-end campaign discounts on membership, training, and software, with a ProZ.com team image that had one extra, rather canine-looking team member added to it. And some of you caught it, and asked about it. The truth is, there is an odd number of people on the team at the moment, so we weren't sure how to best add a team pic with just two rows and have it look neat. So: meet Max.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: Global concerns, part two

November 22, 2022

In early 2022, Russia attacked Ukraine, setting off a chain of events the full results of which we have yet to see. In the immediate aftermath, a great number of people in Ukraine were either forced to leave their country or internally displaced. Again, it was the freelance translators and interpreters who had the skills and tools available to weather the storm with just a tiny bit more of certainty when it came to securing an income, in a moment where everything was uncertain.

Jared Tabor

Music to translate to: a collaborative playlist

November 17, 2022

Some need absolute silence while working. It might also depend on the job, or the part of the job. For some, they work best when the music is just right.

Jared Tabor

Trends in the language services industry: Global concerns, part one

November 16, 2022

The past two to three years have been, as many a corporate email would remind us during the COVID-19 pandemic, “challenging times.” A great many things changed from one day to the next, and now in 2022 we’re still figuring out what some of this means for our work and our lives moving forward. What does this look like to freelance professionals in the language services industry? This report will take a look at both global and industry-specific challenges and opportunities that have presented themselves since the last report, and how freelance language professionals are dealing with those challenges and taking advantage of those opportunities.

Jared Tabor

Jared Tabor

Recent Posts

Trends in the language services industry: A demographic interlude

Years in the industry

Trends in the language services industry: Turnover and Attention Economy

You win some, you lose some

Trends in the language services industry: The continued rise of the remote interpreter

Trends in the language services industry: The need for experts on tech applied to language services

Trends in the language services industry: Machine translation, part 2

Trends in the language services industry: Machine translation, part 1

26 hours of interpreter training added to ProZ.com Plus membership

Trends in the language services industry: Artificial intelligence

Trends in the language services industry: What, me worry?

Trends in the language services industry: general industry trends

Trends in the language services industry: Global concerns, part three

The Great Resignation, The Big Firing, and Other Epic Names

About that one ProZ.com team member...

Trends in the language services industry: Global concerns, part two

Music to translate to: a collaborative playlist

Trends in the language services industry: Global concerns, part one

Subscribe to Email Updates

Lists by Topic

Posts by Topic

Listen to the ProZ.com Podcast

Recent Posts

ProZ.com Headquarters

ProZ.com Argentina

ProZ.com Ukraine