ProZ.com Blog

The results are in. Thank you to everyone who nominated candidates, and all who voted in this year’s Community choice awards. Here are the winners in the interpreting-related categories:

A new map on the interpreter and student pool shows locations of those that have been screened for the pool. 
ProZ.com interpreters map

Thanks to everyone who made nominations for this, the sixth annual ProZ.com community choice awards. Voting is now open, so be sure to check out the nominees and cast your votes for your favorites in the categories for translation and interpreting at https://www.proz.com/community-choice-awards

Every year since 2013, the ProZ.com community choice awards are held to place a spotlight on language professionals who are active, influential or otherwise outstanding in various media, in both translation and interpreting. Nominees and winners are determined entirely by the ProZ.com community.

To assure individual health information is properly protected in the United States, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) was enacted in 1996. The federal law set standards for the electronic exchange, privacy and security of health information. How does this law impact on-demand video and phone interpreters?

Since its release in 2016, ProZ.com mobile for Android and iOS has already been installed and tried by more than 20,000 translators, interpreters, clients and others in the language industry --22,792 to be precise!

BP is an annual conference that brings translators from all over the globe together to talk about industry trends, marketing, CPD and more. And network. And have fun.

For those not familiar, a ProZ.com powwow is an informal, local get-together of language professionals. Any ProZ.com member can propose and organize a powwow in their area. Since 2001, thousands of powwows have been held around the world, in 110 countries.

So far, 454 powwows have been held in 63 cities in the UK, with 3,748 attendees total. At least 50 of those powwows have been organized by Victoria Burns and Alexandra Chapman. This May 5th, Alexandra and Victoria are celebrating 10 years of powwows in Cardiff by holding -- you guessed it -- another powwow!

I asked Alexandra and Victoria to talk a bit about how the Cardiff powwows got started, what the experience has been like, and what benefits they have been able to see from coming together in person with colleagues. Here is what they had to say:

• 55% of freelancers spend 3 hours a week on their online marketing efforts
• 51% of respondents considered marketing too time-consuming, and 41% felt marketing was too costly
• 83% are investing financially in online marketing of some sort
• 72% say they are spending less than but up to 100 USD a month in marketing (those who spend more than that report earning more)
• The average survey respondent had reached their income goal within two years of starting out

The survey sample were some 2,000 US freelancers of all types, so it is reasonable to expect those numbers to be somewhat different if we narrow it down to translators and interpreters, expand the sample to other countries, or both.

One number in particular that caught my eye was the monthly investment in marketing. 100 USD a month sounded pretty steep to me, but maybe I'm wrong. 1,200 USD in freelancer marketing a year. Do you spend that much on your marketing? If so, drop me a line, I'd be very interested in hearing about it and if you find it to be a good investment.

If you are already a paying ProZ.com member, you are spending between 12 and 18 dollars a month on marketing through your membership, though you get all the rest of the tools and opportunities available along with it. It's a kind of marketing that is easy to do, what we'd call passive marketing.

It is now possible to login to your ProZ.com accounts in the ProZ.com Mobile app using Google, Facebook or LinkedIn credentials.