Poll: Are you stepping out of your career comfort zone? Thread poster: ProZ.com Staff
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This forum topic is for the discussion of the poll question "Are you stepping out of your career comfort zone?".
View the poll results »
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I love learning new things, that’s one of the reasons I love translation so much. I did it quite often at the beginning of my career, frequently over the years and nowadays if the project looks interesting enough I might be willing to (always within reason of course)…
[Edited at 2025-10-04 11:02 GMT]
| | | | Ricardo Aries 
Indonesia
Local time: 20:30
Member (2020)
Ingiriisi to Indonesian
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| Back and Forth Between Comfort and Discomfort | Oct 4, 2025 |
Sometimes, your discomfort from being out of your comfort zone will force you to seek comfort again.
| | | | | Absolutely 'Yes!' - and on a daily basis | Oct 4, 2025 |
That was true throughout my working life and continues now in retirement.
When I see polls like this one, I cannot but wonder: What's the point of living and working within one's 'comfort zone'?
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Luca Adie
Germany
Local time: 15:30
German to Ingiriisi
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Is there any safe zone in translation?
Working as a freelancer is already in the wild zone for many people, where I very much like to position myself in society.
| | | | | What's the "comfort zone"? | Oct 4, 2025 |
I don't understand what this question means with "comfort zone" in translation?
I learned at college that translators (and especially interpreters) are under evaluation and scrutiny always. In the case of translators, there's always an editor/proofreader reviewing the translator's work, and in the case of interpreters, most of the time they are criticized by people watching or attending the event they're working.
So, to me, it's an ambiguous question.
| | | | Daryo
Local time: 14:30
Serbiyaan to Ingiriisi
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| About the **actual** poll question | Oct 5, 2025 |
ADIE Translations wrote:
Is there any safe zone in translation?
Working as a freelancer is already in the wild zone for many people, where I very much like to position myself in society.
Right on!
Regarding the **actual** poll question, which is about 'your career comfort zone', I can't see how not to ask FIRST:
a 'career comfort zone' nowadays, what was that?
Even before the AI craze, thanks to the long running outsourcing craze, the ONLY people left who actually are in a kind of 'comfort zone' when it comes to their career are full time translators / interpreters who are part of their employer's permanent staff.
You still can find them (large international organisations like the UN or the EU still have a number of permanent full-time translators / interpreters) but they have become nowadays an exotic species.
There used to be a time when there was opportunities aplenty for translators/interpreters to be employed full-time as permanent or at least long term staff by companies of all sizes and in the public sector.
Not any longer. As ADIE Translations put it Is there any safe zone in translation? is what applies to the vast majority today.
As for 'getting out of your comfort zone' when it comes to the texts you translate it's easy to have the 'bring it on, any time' attitude as much as you want when you are employed full time and you have all the aid available when you need it. Again, less and less applicable - nowadays more in homeopathic doses. Or if you can afford the time to do so for other reasons.
OTOH regarding 'getting out of your comfort zone' when it comes to interpreting the sensible answer to that kind of 'getting out of your comfort zone' can only be:
DON'T DO IT if you can help it!
When translating you have the time for researching the subject matter as long as it takes, or at least at long as you need to get a 'good enough' translation. As a last resort, you can even 'send back to sender' a text that turned out to be a nightmare. In interpreting, all you have is few seconds to come up with a version of the same speech in another language that will give the same message. And you can’t just walk away.
If you happen to be 'out of your comfort zone' when it comes to what is being discussed in a meeting you will quickly get a memorable lesson about 'comfort zones' in interpreting. Which also might be a shortish one if proceedings grind to a halt.
| | | | Denis Fesik
Local time: 16:30
Ingiriisi to Russian
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I'm in a welding school now. I translated tons of texts about welding, so now I'm actually doing it. What people in these forums keep writing about plumbers is more applicable to welders in Russia. I know it won't be easy for me to enter this market after a month of hands-on training and start earning really good money, but I'm pretty optimistic. And I know this job is not easy; even striking an arc in MMA is not at all a straightforward task
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