Riccardo Schiaffino, Language Consultant and Translation Manager at Aliquantum, Inc., has written a very good blog post titled Customers beware: the ethics of scattershot translation projects. In the article, he comments on irresponsible translation businesses that “send confidential and sensitive documents to all and sundry” in the hope of finding a translator who will accept the assignment.
The practice Mr Schiaffino describes is appalling but widespread. It often seems to reflect desperation on the part of translation agencies at the bottom of multi-link subcontracting chains; they have had to accept a very low fee and a very short delivery time, and their chances of finding a competent translator on such terms are close to nil. They may also be oblivious to confidentiality markings in a source language their project managers do not understand.
When confidential material is involved, translation agencies should only commission work from persons whom the agency knows by name and who perform the work themselves. End clients should also explicitly require this. Even if the work concerns a speciality and/or a language pair in which translators, reviewers and other specialists charge fees that are considerably higher than average, the agency directly serving the end client can handle the assignment responsibly by quoting a fee and a delivery time that allow the agency to retain competent professionals. Blind outsourcing of underpriced work ensures disaster.
In addition, confidential information sent by email should always be encrypted. Unfortunately, rather few translation clients or language service providers support PGP.
What is your opinion on these issues? Please post your comments!
Post a Comment