What would you do now if Proz.com had not existed.

ICL wrote:

Getting back to our topic (smile), of course we completely agree. And you are also right about this being maybe just a matter of the choice of words we non-native English speakers may have used (I hope my mentioning of the "non-native" part doesn't open this other known can of worms ).

Lawyer-Linguist wrote:



I'm sure it does -- and probably at considerable expense -- when there is no other option, but you must surely agree that the fact this system does/can work does not preclude the fact that some people are skilled enough in both departments to do the job themselves?

Johanna Timm, PhD wrote:

• I would not have attended the ATA conference in 2004 in Toronto, my first “professional” conference ever that marked the onset of a serious case of Powwow-sitis!
• I would not have booked flights from Canada to Europe 7 times to attend powwows in Germany
• I would not have had various delicious dinners with intelligent, witty colleagues
• I would not have had met a good number of fabulous direct clients who contacted me through my profile page
• I would not have teamed up with my kayaking buddy who found me by sheer accident through ProZ
• I could have kept a tidy house with spotless windows for years instead of living in constant chaos to feed my KudoZ addiction
• I would have worried endlessly about what my teenagers might be up to instead of clicking on hilarious links in the Off-topic forum at odd hours
• I would have watched waaay more Grey’s Anatomy episodes instead of doing research for tricky medical KudoZ questions

Jeeez, come to think of it, I would have been one very grumpy, malnourished, stressed-out old translator with a clean house, control freak-damaged teenagers, and no one to kayak with

Hi,
apart from the translation biz side of the matter here I would like to mention the professional environment and sound spirit of competition ProZ has provided for every one interested. The latter circumstance has facilitated me, for instance, to self-evaluate my language and translation skills and find out that the truth (in my case) lies somewhere out there (in the middle, in between my personal fancies, bits and pieces of life experience and the vast, demanding professional market).
You see, I live in a totally non-English language environment (no Eng-versed TV channels, nor BBC World Service, nothing of the kind). There aren't any (native) English-speaking friends/colleagues of mine in my neck of the woods, either. And with all that in view...just imagine, I have a permanent job in Russ/Ukr>Eng (!) pair (translating articles on economics for a Ukrainian web-site) that I've been doing for a couple of months... The number of Twitter followers of the site has doubled ever since I started and so my salary has done. And plus, quite recently, I've received an offer for making surveys of articles from FT, The Economist and the like in my own languages !
Via ProZ I've had myself well equipped with novel translation tools and, most importantly, established very good relationships with a good number of native speakers, too.
Doesn't it sound encouraging enough? Were it not for ProZ, the only thing left for me would be just sitting and watching a never-ending elections soap-opera on TV with short breaks for shopping or a bike ride..
So,
cheer up and good luck in your endeavors!