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.
I often work for agencies who don't ask me to sign anything, however I always act as if we do have an agreement. A new direct client asked me to do a paid test article. They liked the work, so to be courteous, I deducted the test price from my first invoice.