ProZ.com, Inc.Reviews of proz.com

They only seem to be interested in one thing - to get your membership fee. Since I do not pay others for my own hopes I never paid. Otherwise it is just another bidding site. I only went there because someone wanted my ProZ profile and I made it but since then I never heard from that someone again. Better keep that money for yourself. And, yes, anyone can claim to be a translator there. Serious agencies give you a test. You may find out that your fields of expertise do not match their requirements (there is no such thing as a universal translator) and usually it is not so easy to start with an agency even if you pass the test but at least you can expect some result. And it does not cost anything, maybe except the price of printing out a paper contract and sending it to the agency. But not a membership fee for being on their list.

Great for freelancers

I found that a lot of scammers contacted me from ProZ and I got more trouble from them than help. Another thing I found to be a turn off is that when other members found I was talking a certain language, they contacted me, making nice with me over the phone, finding out how much I charge, what are my clients, only to find out that they were doing that to find out what kind of competition I am for "them". When I would contact them to ask advice, or to just say hi, they ghosted me. Overall, ProZ lured me in(joining a facebook group required a ProZ membership), but once I was in, I didn't gain anything out of it, except I paid them money, or except "a taking" on their part happened. There was no community- but just folks trying to find out about you, what you do so they can discredit you on some level.

I disagree with the negative comments posted here: I've now been working as a freelance translator for 8 years, and that would never have happened without ProZ. ProZ offers a great meeting space for freelancers and outsourcers/translation agencies. But that's what ProZ is: a meeting platform. Translation jobs are not magically going to land in your inbox simply because you registered on the platform. As a freelancer, you need to put the work in: build a solid profile, with translation samples to showcase your skills, do a few pro bono jobs and then request feedback to have something to show to potential paying clients, customise your application for each job to show you are the right translator for this specific project, instead of sending the same template to every outsourcer, etc.... And yes, paying members get a lot more benefits and work opportunities, but ProZ is not a charity, they need income to provide their platform to you! So if you are not ready to do all this, then your paying membership will be a waste of money, but if you are, the return on investment is well worth it. And of course, ProZ can't guarantee that the outsourcer will pay you on time, or that the translator you hire is qualified or reliable, but they have feedback systems in place for both, and they flag up outsourcers that have been consistenly reported for non-payment, so I really think they're doing what is reasonnably possible here. My one strong criticism would be the way translators are ranked in search results: the rankings are mainly based on the level of participation to their terminology Q&A page for translators (called KudoZ), which is not fair, or representative of the translator's skills/experience. But, if you're a real, talented translator (not someone who think they can translate because they are vaguely bilingual), and if you have a bit of common sense and business sense, ProZ is a great place to start.

Terrible support It's an OK site for being contacted by agencies once you've been a member for a few years, but they go out of their way to support dishonest agencies and not their paying customers.

I have now been reached 3 different times by 3 different people/3 different emails all with the same pretense of wanting to hire me for an English to Spanish translation, always using the same document and with the same scheme. The first time I had my doubts but followed through with the back and forth communication until I received a check from them, delivered by UPS. They attempted to pay me over $4K “in advance”, I called the bank the check came from and they confirmed the account had been closed and the check was fraudulent.

Anna Verbuk has been translating from English to Russian in support of MAPS: the Marine Arctic Peace Sanctuary being established as quickly as possible. Her work has been exemplary, and we are grateful to have found her!

Unethical service! As a translation agency we have been targeted by a group of translator who used Google to translate a large assignment for us. We ended up paying a large sum (over 400.000 USD) in damages to the client and did not pay for the translation these people made. They used Proz to taget us. We provided proof to Proz in form of documentation from our lawyer and Proz still keeps the negative remarks about us on the site. We consider Proz to be a place were you find amateur translators, the real ones you find among those listed but the different organisation that organises translator like ATA etc. The management of Proz lacks every form for decency, are unethical and this is clearly why Proz is going down the drain.