Interpreting is intense—mentally, emotionally, and sometimes even physically. You're not just translating words; you're helping people navigate life-defining moments. From medical emergencies to asylum interviews, court cases to social services, interpreters often find themselves holding space for others while carrying invisible weight themselves.

Holding space for others only works if you're also making space for yourself.

Whether you’re working on-site or remotely, as a freelancer or staff interpreter, burnout can sneak in. Fatigue, emotional overload, or even the pressure to “always be available” can chip away at your well-being. And yet, in this profession, many still push through quietly—until they can’t.

Angela Luana Zalazar Aguirre

We asked the popular artificial intelligence tool for the answer.

A translator and an interpreter are both language professionals who facilitate communication between people who speak different languages. However, they do so in different ways and in different settings.

Mike Donlin

Join the ProZ.com community in celebrating International Translation Day with two full days of online sessions, panel discussions, live interactions and more. Each day, the events will include a remote networking session in the final hour.

Mike Donlin

Your profile picture

Nowadays your profile picture is required almost everywhere: networking platforms like ProZ.com, resumes, and even interpreting platforms. So you should know how to use your profile picture to your advantage.

Enrique

There are many within the translation and interpreting community who live far from the land where they were born. We pack our bags without too much difficulty, learn new languages, assimilate new cultures, make new friends. But even among such a well-travelled and cosmopolitan community, some stories stand out as unusual, and that of Yalda Hamidi, an Afghan interpreter now living in Ecuador, is remarkable.

Andrew Morris

It’s hard to picture two more different places than the Kathmandu Valley and suburban Toronto, but such extreme contrasts form a natural part of the narrative of Bimal Man Shrestha’s life.

Andrew Morris

The ProZ.com Interpreter Network -the pool of pre-screened professional interpreters- continues to grow with new interpreters joining every day 🚀

Enrique

From selling water from a truck to earning an impressive living as an interpreter is quite a journey. But then that’s true of Ivanildo Xavier’s life as a whole – an adventure that saw him travel to Bolivia, working in bars and living on the wild side, before finally returning home to settle down and build his career. 

Andrew Morris

The country where you were born and bred and spent your first 11 years implodes into civil war, with warlords running riot, and militia groups vying for domination of the capital Mogadishu. Ongoing armed conflict, insecurity, lack of state protection, and recurring humanitarian crises expose your fellow-Somali civilians to serious abuse, resulting in millions of internally displaced people, with many living unassisted and vulnerable. As a family, there aren’t that many choices open to you, if all you want is a quiet life, and a chance to educate your children.

Andrew Morris

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.

Andrew Morris

As any other aspect of our lives, our jobs have been re-shaped by this “new reality”. As language professionals we are used to perform remote work, but for interpreters reality is –or was– different.

Hayjor Roca