ProZ.com Blog

As a freelancer looking for opportunities on ProZ.com, your professional profile is your most important tool —but you may not know it yet! Here are some ideas to take your profile from good to great, and attract clients' attention at a higher rate.

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?

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.

ProZ.com the website has been around since 1999, and so have those who have volunteered to foster and protect the positive, results-oriented atmosphere of the site: the moderators.

It's that time of year again! For the tenth year in a row, ProZ.com is hosting free live virtual events to celebrate International Translation Day. This year, the events will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday, September 25th and 26th. There will be over 50 hours of content from experts, chances to discuss, network, and have fun.

The event has been approved for up to 10 ATA continuing education points, and you can attend, for free and without the need to register, from any ProZ.com page, on Facebook, Twitter, Periscope, or from ProZ.com Mobile. Recorded sessions from this year's event will be made permanently available to all ProZ.com Plus subscribers after the event, as part of the Plus video library.

Through cooperation with the good folks at Routledge, ProZ.com members can now receive a 20% discount off their purchases of books at Routledge, along with free shipping. In addition, Routledge is offering a free chapter download from the book Being a Successful Interpreter by Jonathan Downie.

Powwows are informal get-togethers of groups of ProZ.com users living in close proximity. The events are organized by local translators, for local translators.

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:

Since 2009, ProZ.com has hosted an annual, free, online event for language professionals in celebration of International Translation Day (ITD), September 30th. You can see past events at ProZ/TV. The name of the day notwithstanding, interpreters also deserve some of the spotlight at these events! Here is a selection of some recorded sessions from past ITD events which may be of interest to you if you interpret, or are considering getting into the interpreting field...

Giampiero Lungone is an industrial-technical interpreter in engineering training, working in Italian - Spanish - English. He recently joined the ProZ.com Interpreter Pool, one of the new pools of screened language designed to make it easier for clients to find experts. In this post, Giampiero talks about how he got started in interpreting, a bit about his work, and some considerations to keep in mind if you are thinking of starting a career as an interpreter.

Are you going to GALA 2018 Conference in Boston next week? The 10th annual conference from the Globalization and Localization Association (GALA) will be held from March 13-16.

Interested in meeting up in Boston?

As you may have already heard, the European language industry association (Elia) and ProZ.com have teamed up to broadcast this year's event, Together 2018. Together is an annual two-day event from Elia, where language service companies and independent professionals convene for open dialogue on industry trends, to learn mutually-relevant new approaches, to update technical skills and, ultimately, develop lasting relationships to serve their end clients better. This year, the event will be held on February 22nd and 23rd.

If you are a ProZ.com Plus subscriber, you will have access to the broadcast and recordings from this year's event for free.

ProZ.com Plus membership comes with all the benefits members have come to know over the past nineteen years, plus a lot of new tools and opportunities designed with the serious freelance language professional in mind. This series takes a look at these additional benefits, one at a time.

______________________________

The future looks bright for a certain type of translator, interpreter, or anyone providing language services.

These are the language professionals who are able to adapt to the changes that affect us all in general, and the changes that affect how things work in the industry. Some of these changes are related to globalization, some are tech-based, others have to do with how we have come to expect a service to be delivered, in terms of time, cost, and quality, and very often without even having met the person or persons providing the service.

Translation challenges over the next decade and how to address them 

Today's guest post was written by Paula Ribeiro - president and co-founder of the Portuguese Association of Translators and Interpreters (APTRAD). Paula is a long-time ProZ.com member and part of the Certified PRO Network. APTRAD will be holding its second international conference on May 17th, 18th and 19th in Porto, Portugal.

There is a new survey on CAT tool use open now. It is designed in part as a follow up to a study on CAT tools that was released in 2013:

1. CAT tool use by translators: who is using?
2. CAT tool use by translators: what are they using?

If you have a few minutes to share your input, it would be appreciated.

Participate in the survey here >>