Tags
Client visibility, Client-relations, Freelancer, ITI, Professional translator, ProZ, translating
Following on from a ProZ quick poll last week which asked whether readers were members of a professional translation association (over 60% were not!), and which went surprisingly undefended by the powers-that-be in the main translation associations, I thought it might be worth looking at things from a different perspective. I personally think it is well worth joining a professional translation association – the ITI in my particular case (see my views here – but I also think that ProZ membership is worth its weight in gold…. I should add that I have absolutely no affiliation with ProZ, so am merely speaking from my own experience!
I know a lot of my colleagues in the ITI take a very “sniffy” attitude towards ProZ – claiming they’re just out to make money and offer a “lowest price” marketplace for translations. There’s no doubt that ProZ is a commercial organisation, but I for one have benefitted from my membership over the years.
I first came across ProZ in 2004/5 when I noticed their term searches coming up in my Google research and a colleague in France commented that they could be quite useful. I joined as a non-paying member soon after and started to build up KudoZ points answering term queries and BrowniZ by commenting on peer answers and generally contributing to the site. I also found it a useful source of general information about the industry via the forums, which cover general topics such as inquiries from translators just starting out to specific fields such as speech recognition or individual CAT tools. Very soon after registering on the site, still as an unpaid member, I started to receive inquiries from clients – usually agencies, paying good rates, although I have been contacted by direct clients too – and I noticed my client portfolio gradually starting to expand. Looking at my client list today, I can safely say that 50% of my clients probably contacted me via ProZ in the first instance. I’m still working with many of these today as loyal clients providing interesting jobs on a regular and well-paid basis. I personally have never gone through the bidding procedures for the jobs advertised on the ProZ job pages, and I think these are where the site gets its reputation for low rates and bidding wars – but it certainly isn’t the only way of contacting potential clients!
Admittedly, I have a fairly unusual specialism in the nuclear sector, but provided you have a well-defined niche and a carefully-constructed profile, there’s no reason why clients shouldn’t come knocking at your door too. The key is the detail in the profile – take care to fill in all the fields, ask for WWWs (Willingness to Work Again) from clients/colleagues, describe your particular USPs and, crucially, add key words as these are what will help clients narrow down the search to your profile. I have my key words translated into both of my source languages as well as my target language – clients may not speak English after all! A good KudoZ record (answering term queries) will boost your position in the rankings, as will contributions throughout the site, i.e. on forums. This is about as far as an unpaid membership takes you.
If you really want to bulldoze your way up the search ratings, a paid membership will do just that. Paid members automatically take precedence over unpaid members, so if someone is searching for a French > English translator in the field of nuclear energy, someone who has paid for membership will be listed above someone who has not. More importantly, as Anne Diamantidis pointed out at a social media presentation at last year’s ITI conference, ProZ gets very high Google rankings: sure enough, when I searched for “French English nuclear translator” on Google, my ProZ profile came up on the first search page – which is pretty good going, and certainly better than my own website or my ITI listing! That in itself is probably well worth the £85 renewal fee….
Apart from its marketing potential, paid membership also gives free access to the Blue Board, which is a useful way of checking whether the agency contacting you is a viable proposition or not. As a rule of thumb, I wouldn’t touch an agency with less than a perfect rating (5), but you can always contact the reviewers and seek further clarification if you’re tempted to take a risk.
Then there’s the ProZ conferences and informal PowWows, which I’ve always found a very good way of networking and meeting other translators. I’ve attended four conferences over the years and always come away with useful knowledge about the industry, be it about specialist tools or different aspects of translation, made some excellent contacts (some leading to work!) and generally come away feeling good about the profession. Whilst the last two ITI conferences have certainly matched that “feelgood” impression of the industry, previous events used to feel “stuffy” in comparison. Similarly, the ITI networks can feel quite daunting for newcomers, whereas in the ProZ forums, there tends to be a much more welcoming, friendly approach – no-one need feel they’ll be shot down in flames for asking what seems to them to be a non-obvious question…. We all have to learn, after all.
More to the point, asking questions in the technical forums is often a sure-fire way of getting a prompt answer straight from the horse’s mouth: representatives of SDL Trados, Wordfast, Dragon, etc. do monitor the forums and will often answer specific queries where a posting on the respective Yahoo pages or even a direct e-mail haven’t been successful. I had this recently, when I had a problem with relicensing Trados after a hard drive crash and needing my licence reset manually. I had managed to contact SDL by e-mail (not an easy feat in itself!), and been told that a colleague would contact me, but in the meantime, helping another colleague with a question about contacting SDL by e-mail, a representative from SDL told me about a self-service option to “force the return” of my licence – problem solved! Equally well, colleagues may have experienced the same issues as you and reply with a quick answer.
Admittedly, there are a lot of “easy” questions asked on KudoZ and you do sometimes get the impression that some so-called translators are abusing the system by posting virtually every term in a tricky sentence! But in that case you ignore or block the people in question; you can choose which (if any) subjects / languages you see term queries in, just as you can elect which forum topics you’d like to receive notifications for. There are some extremely competent translators on the ProZ books, especially in the technical sector, who I’m always grateful to see come up when I’ve posted a technical term which is out of my comfort zone!
All in all, I find ProZ a useful resource, and one which is well worth my annuaI £85 subscription (at recent exchange rates). I don’t get involved with the bottom-feeding aspects of the bidding wars and I make sure that any clients who do contact me are clear about my rates and terms. For every couple who don’t come back after the initial enquiry, there are sure to be others who are happy to find and pay for quality work.
Edited October 2017: Please also see my post 2 years on for a modified viewpoint: https://clairecoxtranslations.wordpress.com/2016/03/23/the-great-proz-debate-revisited/
I also discovered today that non-paying members can no longer access the Blue Board by using Browniz, which makes the site even less useful if the quality of enquiries no longer makes it worthwhile…
ClaireCoxTranslations 
I agree with you Claire, I find my ProZ membership very useful. I always check to see if a company is listed on the Blue Board before accepting work and many good customers have approached me after finding me first in the ProZ directory.
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Sure! However the membership fee is too high! It started from EUR68 and now it tripled! No value for money anymore!
Value for money?! What price having your business card in a shop window for the world to see? That sounds pretty good value to me. I think a lot of translators underestimate the value of marketing their services, but we do offer a commodity like anyone else in the service industry and we have to advertise ourselves. Setting up your own website would cost significantly more than ProZ membership, but wouldn’t have anywhere near the international impact. My renewal fee came onto my statement this week and worked out as just over £80 with the current exchange rate: that’s just over a tank and a third of petrol for my car. Excellent value for a year’s worth of advertising in my book…..
I agree, it’s too high, particularly when they don’t send you the emails notifying you of jobs. That’s why I quit.
Hi Claire,
Yes, Proz membership does what ITI hasn’t done for the translation industry.
The point about the Blue Board of not dealing with agencies less than 5 is a bit harsh. Some agencies will have a lower score because a translator has given them a ‘4’. I work with agencies of less than 4 simply by not offering 30-day credit terms and requiring 50 per cent up front and the balance on completion. Business is business and I am not emotional about it.
As a translator you should set your terms. The agencies to be wary of are those that insist on 60 -90 day credit terms. I always send them a four page credit agreement. They can refuse or accept my standard 30-day agreement with penalties for late payment as prescribed by EU law.
I don’t think you can compare the ITI and ProZ – they don’t claim to offer the same things at all: one is a professional translators’ association with stringent entry requirements, promoting quality in translation, the interests of its members and the perception of the industry as a whole – I think it’s doing a pretty good job of that nowadays, although I agree it wasn’t always the case. ProZ on the other hand is primarily a job marketplace and informal support forum for translators – which it also does very well.
As for my Blue Board comments being harsh, well, that’s based on my experiences over the years. On the odd occasion I’ve accepted work from an agency with less than a 5 (based on recent ratings), I’ve had issues, including one notable UK agency which ultimately went bankrupt – I knew I shouldn’t have ignored my gut feeling on seeing that 4…. Needless to say, I’ll never see the £600 I invoiced them again, but it taught me a lesson. Other people may prefer to take more of a risk.
I quite agree with your point about terms though: I always specify my terms on quoting a new client and have NO interest whatsoever in working for clients who stipulate 45 or 60 day terms.
Hello Claire,
Thanks for your blog post. It’s very persuasive. I admit I also share(d) the prejudice against ProZ, although having said that, I also admit that I do have a free profile on it anyway because I recognised that ProZ is simply part of the lay of the land and there’s no getting around that. My account had been inactive for years until I recently launched a new website and was worried about it harmonising with my outdated ProZ account, so I reactivated and updated it. Although I only did this very minimally, within a short period of time a very interesting French agency (and I have very positive experiences of working with the French, so that immediately caught my interest) had searched me out and written an individual message inviting me to apply to their agency, although they also already had a general announcement about it on the job boards.
There are a lot of negative things said about ProZ on the web, but these are perhaps becoming outdated. ProZ is different from the way it used to be before I reactivated my account. So I am more open now, partly thanks to your article, about making more use of it. I also don’t compete for jobs but having a presence there is what can be useful.
I’m glad to hear it, Phyllis. As I said in my article, I have no affiliation with ProZ whatsoever, so I am simply sharing my experiences of what the site has done for me. It’s a shame if other people don’t experience the same benefits, but I do think you have to put the effort in to make sure your profile is as complete as possible, so that clients can find you. Even then there are no guarantees, as I explained to a colleague yesterday in a language combination with traditionally low rates. But surely having yourself in the ProZ shop window has to be more advantageous than not bothering at all – you reach a much larger audience, and one contact you make, be it via a search, networking or your KudoZ answers or forum posts, may just lead on to something worthwhile.
Yes, exactly, if you gain just one good contact, then that is already invaluable. As freelancers, we don’t need that many clients if they pay well and the relationship is strong. So who cares if they found you on ProZ or whatever. When I was first starting out in around 2006, I paid for one year’s registration in translatorsbase.com. You can also find bad things said about it, but in that one year, apart from a few one-off jobs, I gained a great contact that today still uses me as their go-to person for French and German. Sometimes you just never know what can happen or who will find you.
Hi Claire,
I have had exactly the same experiences so far. I wish I had written that post myself!
The only difference is that I have never attended any Proz.com-sponsored conferences.
My use of the Proz.com website is exactly the same as yours. And I have been contacted by both direct customers and small translation agencies specializing in my fields. Not the other way round!
And I have met nice people there too: translators and translation agency owners.
My annual subscription has paid off handsomely since I first became a paying member of Proz in 2004.
Delighted to hear it, Eric. I’ve loved the ProZ conferences I’ve attended, so I urge you to give them a go if the opportunity arises. I can’t go to Pisa this year, unfortunately, as I have a prior engagement that weekend, but I had a great time in Aix, Rome, Vienna and London – and met some lovely colleagues and picked up some work contacts in the process. Win-win situation!
I have been a member since 2004 and it was very helpful then and for three or four years. As I had stopped teaching, I also had a lot of free time and spent it using the various ProZ facilities to exchange views and get or give help. I also met my second husband there all the way from Mexico, a translator too of course. Not at a conference but in the “trips and holiday forum!
I attended only one conference in Oxford and loved it. Thatt is where I met Henry Dotterer and also Yves Champollion, both now too busy, I suppose, to be present at such events round the world.
I also attended a couple of powows in my home town and in spain, just accross the border. Both were great! As one gets settled into routines, with regular clients, the need to attend those events disappears! But it is a must for the younger translator, without any doubt.
Well, I’d never thought of ProZ as a dating agency for translators, but now you mention it…. how lovely! I still think it’s good to attend such events to keep up with the latest in the profession, and to exchange views with other like-minded people, plus as a welcome change from the sometimes isolated world of the freelancer.
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Sorry, I know it’s an old thread but I wanted to post my experience. I have been a paid member for 2 years but I never got any contract from proz.com even though I tried hard and I was quite successful on other platforms (I don’t even care about proz now).
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