ProZ.com Blog

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

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. 

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.

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.

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.