Portfolio of work

William Bowley wrote:

As a translator, you are not a travelling salesperson in the 1800s - you are not showing off a 'portfolio' of your wares!

Providing your work in this manner goes against any confidentiality agreements you hold. Even without such agreements in place, it is questionable from an ethical and professional point of view. I wouldn't be rushing to show someone my past work.

If they're really interested, they'll give you the work based on your CV, profiles and interactions. Failing that, completing a short test piece or a 'trial' (small amount of paid work until they can evaluate whether they like it) might be options.

Adieu wrote:

Any worthwhile stuff you do as a professional is under NDA, unless they simply forgot to make you sign one, in which case you should still act like it is

For a questionable prospect, I offer samples on terms like "send me a link to some article on a relevant topic and I will happily translate a sample of a couple RANDOM paragraphs of my choosing" (I refuse to do whole documents or assigned sections for off-the-street randos, since that often gets used by scammers)

For a PROVEN prospect (know people who work there, work with them already on other language pairs) I'll take an assigned one-page sample

Once upon a time I tried to land some voiceover gigs, for that I just recorded a few short samples of classical literature or news articles. If you really want unsolicited samples to show off, I suppose you could do that.