The social web allows to easily maintain relationships with other persons across spatial and temporal boundaries. Particularly self-employed professionals, who rely heavily on tangible and intangible resources from their support networks for their professional success, are expected to benefit from web-based social technologies by enjoying greater visibility, efficient collaboration with clients and partners, and easy access to information and work. Freelance translators have been found to use

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... dicated online discussion forums and online marketplaces for knowledge exchange, social support and as a source of work. However, other research suggests that personal networks that are based on face-to-face interactions are the backbone of social network markets like the translation industry. The objective of this study is, therefore, to investigate which influence the social web has on the personal support networks of professional translators. This thesis presents the results of a study conducted with a group of professional freelance and in-house translators, investigating the structures of their personal and professional ego-networks using qualitative social network analysis and ethnographic methods. Surprisingly and despite research findings from previous studies on translators' participation in online communities, the participants of this study have been found to be rather passive users of the social web. Social capital is mostly generated from strong ties within personal and professional networks. Trust and attributed competences are the main drivers of relationship building and maintenance among colleagues. The WWW has become the main source of information, which caused a decrease of weak ties, as relationships with technical experts who may be contacted in case of translation problems have turned obsolete.