I’m sure there are less dramatic ways of taking a fresh look at your life than having a heart attack, (as happened to me last week), but unfortunately we aren’t always offered a choice.

It casts just about everything in a new light, but for obvious reasons, the main effect is to make you consider your lifestyle in terms of health. 

Because we’re freelancers, without the safety net of most long-term employees, we’re particularly vulnerable, making it all the more important to focus – if just for a little while – on some key issues.

Andrew Morris

Editor's note: This blog post was published by ProZ.com founder Henry Dotterer over 15 years ago (December 19, 2004) as part of the ProZ.com Translation Article Knowledgebase. There are some minor edits made here based on the platform's evolution. Does it still apply today? I think so. 

Fact: Clients rarely go looking for good all-around translators. They almost always search for translators whose skills match perfectly with the job they have in hand.

Mike Donlin

ProZ.com's unique membership model means that when outsourcers and service providers connect via ProZ.com, neither side is charged any commissions or fees. Meet a client or provider, and the relationship is yours, unencumbered, forever. What does this mean?

Mike Donlin

In the second half of 2019, ProZ.com, Translators without Borders, and other organizations collaborated with Common Sense Advisory (CSA) on a survey directed at professional translators and interpreters. The information gathered in this survey, which was completed by over 7,000 professionals (most of them freelancers), was then used by CSA to build a report which covers a variety of areas, including demographics, behaviors, interaction with clients, income, technology, and trends and challenges being faced by today's freelance language professional. The ProZ.com team is happy to be able to help distribute this report to those who may be interested.

Jared Tabor

California Assembly Bill 5 took effect on January 1, 2020 and holds that most workers are employees - not freelancers. This has started to impact the gig economy and the language industry's translators and interpreters.

The statute (AB5) was signed into law by California governor Gavin Newsom in September 2019 and took effect on January 1, 2020. While initial coverage focused on freelance drivers for ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft, its impact has been felt across many industries including language professionals.

Mike Donlin

Last night, the film Parasite became the first non-English language movie to win Best Picture at the Oscars. It won 4 awards in total. The wins resulted in plenty of screen time in front of a worldwide audience for interpreter Sharon Choi. But does she have a profile at ProZ.com?

Mike Donlin

SEO, short for search engine optimization, is a cluster of practices and techniques for increasing the quality and quantity of visits of a website or a web page by targeting search engine users. Over half of all website traffic comes from organic search —that means, traffic from search engines that you aren’t paying for. In Google alone, 63,000 searches are conducted per second.

SEO settings affect not only how you show up on ProZ.com, but how (and if) you appear on search engines.

Andrea Capuselli

Serving the world's largest community of translators, ProZ.com delivers a comprehensive network of essential services, resources and experiences that enhance the lives of its members. What are some of the site's most popular features?

Mike Donlin

ProZ.com localization: A community effort to make ProZ.com accessible to everyone.

If you are non-native English speaker, you might have realized by now that ProZ.com is also available in over 60 other languages. This is possible thanks to ProZ.com localizers, site members who have volunteered their efforts and skills to help the community. 

ProZ.com localization started in 2006, with the goal of making ProZ.com accessible for non-English speaking language professionals. Over a decade has passed, and today, ProZ.com is being localized into 84 languages. Some of the areas that have been localized so far include...

Andrea Capuselli

In part 1 of Henry's story, we saw how a moment in the company of Mona Lisa sparked a flash of inspiration that led to some research which resulted in a dream…

Andrew Morris

Options are available to purchase membership at ProZ.com through local currency and payment contacts in 25 different countries. This means you or your business can benefit from ProZ.com membership by purchasing in your currency in a way that might be more effective for you.

Mike Donlin

Among the many benefits of ProZ.com Plus membership is the chance to take part in the Translation Mastermind group on Facebook. It’s an established community of professionals who enjoy sharing ideas and tips about translation, in a completely troll-free atmosphere. It’s into its fourth year now, an independent entity, but sponsored by ProZ.com from Day 1.

Andrew Morris

Did you know you can set preferences on language jobs related emails in all sorts of ways, to make your experience with ProZ.com better serve your needs? Interesting and lucrative opportunities from language companies and end clients are posted as jobs hundreds of times each day.

Many users set their email preferences at ProZ.com and forget them. 

This post is your reminder. If you want to know about jobs posted in your language pairs, translation jobs, interpreting jobs, specialties, working fields and interest fields, make sure that you are set to receive jobs notifications.

Mike Donlin