Your business opportunities require the services of language professionals across many languages from many different countries. Features exist at ProZ.com and other freelancer platforms for you and your vendor managers to quickly recruit many freelancers for your job in translation, interpreting, subtitling, transcription and more. Your project managers may deploy these tools to recruit talent to complete the work.
How will you pay this crowd of freelancers?
Translation Postcards: Esther Lequipe in La Paz, Bolivia
It’s the world’s highest capital, a bowl-shaped city in the shadow of the fabled Illimani mountain to the southeast, a rocky presence which has infused the country’s folk music, poetry and art for centuries.
Read MoreChanging Places 1: Paul Urwin – from England to Colombia
As we’ll see throughout this series, life can take us on some strange journeys from where we started out to where we end up. In the case of Paul Urwin, who was born and grew up in the sleepy Somerset town of Street, (main claim to fame: it’s home to Clarks, the famous British footwear brand), a number of decisions and chance encounters led him to the life he now leads in Bogotá, Colombia, fluent in Spanish, a happy husband and father, and of course Head of Training at ProZ.com.
Read MoreHow the overpayment scam works on freelancers
The overpayment scam may be the most active scam affecting online freelancers. This scheme is very simple, and many are entrapped with it.
You are offered a job with part of the payment coming in advance, but the scammer sends you a larger than agreed upon payment and asks for a partial refund. Or, a payment is made in advance and then the project is unexpectedly canceled.
Translation Postcards: Ezliana Zainal Abidin in Mallorca, Spain
Long before it became a package-holiday destination, or the darling of the low-cost weekend-break generation, the island of Mallorca was known as a favourite summer getaway for royalty, as well as a splendid refuge for artists, writers and musicians in search of inspiration. Golden and turquoise coastlines, magnificent mountain views and rolling hills dotted with vineyards, almond, olive and citrus groves. Away from the glamour of the beaches, the rural backwaters are full of orange trees and donkeys, small villages and traditional ways of life, folk traditions and religious feast days, bonfires and dancing demons, all under clear Mediterranean skies…
Read MoreStrategies to stand out on freelancer websites
There are millions of freelancers out there, and over 1 million registered at ProZ.com, likely with thousands within your language pairs; how can you compete? One of the top methods successful freelancers use to create a viable business is by creating a standout profile on freelancer websites.
How do they do this? Here are some strategies for standing out from the crowd.
Read MoreTranslation Postcards: Natalia Slipenko in Kyiv, Ukraine
Let’s start with a pronunciation lesson: it’s Kyiv (rhymes with peeve), not Kee-eff. Got it? At least that’s what your modern internationalist in the know says. Problem is, not many people are in the know when it comes to Ukraine. From the media we might glean snippets about wars, orange-coloured revolutions, and political turmoil, not to mention the infamy of Chernobyl. And yes, there’s a territorial war with Russia going on as we speak in the East of the country. But that’s a long way from Kyiv, a vibrant city with a great deal to offer, and where everyone’s in a hurry, whether in bright summer sunshine or crunching over a thick layer of snow.
Read MoreStudents can be freelancers too
Are you a student looking for a way to earn money while you go to school? Many students choose to take on a part-time job or paid internship. It is important to ask, besides money, are you actually gaining anything? Often, part-time jobs have nothing to do with your degree, and internships just mean endless grunt work. There is a different option; you can work as a freelancer.
Freelancers need to set your payment terms
As a freelancer, one of the most joyous parts of the month is getting paid. However, when you work for yourself, it can get a little more complicated than just cashing a monthly check. Here are our strategies for how and when to get paid as a freelancer as well as how to set payment terms.
Read MoreAnnouncing a new series called Global Voices
As you know, ProZ.com works closely with Boostlingo to provide Remote Simultaneous Interpreters (RSI), and we have a whole bunch of unsung heroes who are not only providing vital input to communities and individuals in equally unsung places, but making good money from home, popping up whenever their services are needed in real time.
Translation Postcards: Kristina Wolf in Canberra, Australia
Not many translators wake up every morning to the sound of cockatoos. Or find possums in their back yard. Or set out for a picnic, only to be joined by kangaroos, wombats or spiny anteaters. And don’t forget those sturdy shoes when out hiking in snake season. But then again, not many translators live in Canberra in Australia.
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Translation Postcards: Kelvin Zifla in Tirana, Albania
These days, the most oft-cited example of an isolated country ploughing its own furrow, cut off from the rest of the world, is North Korea, but there were long decades in the aftermath of World War II when Albania was a strong contender for the title…
Get these 3 friends to review your professional profile
How much time have you spent improving your profile? Being critical of yourself it not easy for everyone. Do you need help? Get 3 friends to review your profile, but choose 3 different kinds of friends to review your profile to get more results. Find a friend in the language industry, a friend who hires people in any line of work, and a friend who loves you no matter what.
Translation Postcards: Thomas Chahweta in Harare, Zimbabwe
It was a humble beginning. One of eleven children, nine of whom are still alive, Thomas Chahweta grew up in a rural village in Zimbabwe. As in many countries in the South, children were seen by the previous generation as an investment. His parents were subsistence farmers and he and his siblings worked hard in the fields growing crops, selling the excess harvest to pay for school fees.


