Ethical issues: problematic situations and solutions Thread poster: Miruna Cocian
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Miruna Cocian
Romania
Local time: 12:56
English to Romanian
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Relatable experiences in terms of ethical issues
Hello, my name is Miruna Cocian and I am a Translation Studies student from Romania.
I am working on a study related to ethical issues in translation and interpretation. My main focus at this time is on two particular principles: confidentiality and fidelity. My requests are as follows:
1. Could you share some examples of situations where you were faced with breaching confidentiality in the pro... See more Relatable experiences in terms of ethical issues
Hello, my name is Miruna Cocian and I am a Translation Studies student from Romania.
I am working on a study related to ethical issues in translation and interpretation. My main focus at this time is on two particular principles: confidentiality and fidelity. My requests are as follows:
1. Could you share some examples of situations where you were faced with breaching confidentiality in the process of translating/interpreting? How did you manage that situation? Did any of those situations have the potential to move from ethical/unethical into legal/illegal territory?
2. Could you share some examples of situations or issues related to the principle of fidelity in translation/interpreting (faithfully rendering the idea and form of the original)? How did you manage that situation? Did any of those situations have the potential to move from ethical/unethical into legal/illegal territory?
I would be very grateful if you could help me by sharing some of your work experience.
Thank you very much.
[Edited at 2016-11-02 08:40 GMT] ▲ Collapse
| | | | Mario Chavez (X) 
Local time: 05:56
English to Spanish
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| Confidentiality and fidelity | Nov 2, 2016 |
Hello, Miruna,
In my 25 or so years as a translator (EnglishSpanish) in the USA, I have never faced a breach of confidentiality, mostly because my employers and/or clients asked me to sign an NDA (nondisclosure agreement), standard practice in our profession here (USA, I mean).
However, I do remember having faced a problem. I am a regular Twitter user and I use this social media to share translation challenges and my solutions to them, or exemplify situations in our pr... See more Hello, Miruna,
In my 25 or so years as a translator (EnglishSpanish) in the USA, I have never faced a breach of confidentiality, mostly because my employers and/or clients asked me to sign an NDA (nondisclosure agreement), standard practice in our profession here (USA, I mean).
However, I do remember having faced a problem. I am a regular Twitter user and I use this social media to share translation challenges and my solutions to them, or exemplify situations in our profession that need attention. Once, I inadvertently published the name of a company (client of mine) on a twitter message. The company contacted me to complain, asking me to remove the tweet. I did remove the tweet, offered an appropriate apology and we moved on.
Some companies are more forgiving than others in dealing with breaches of confidentiality.The moral of my story: make sure you understand how strict or flexible a client is with breaches of confidentiality, because breaches can happen to the best of us, in my opinion.
Scholar Eugene Nida, who wrote about Bible translations, discussed the concept of fidelity and came up with dynamic (later he called it functional) fidelity. There are several translation theories that discuss translation fidelity depending on their focus: the text, the audience, the client, the end of the text. To have a balanced view of translation fidelity, a translator needs to familiarize herself with the main theories (the well-reasoned theories, that is). For example, Christiane Nord talks about instrumental translation and Vermeer elaborates on the skopos theory; these theories are essential for technical translators and translators working with commercial documentation.
In short, about fidelity: regardless of the theories, interpretation works with a different medium and fidelity discussions on interpretation have little to do with fidelity approaches in translation.
I hope the above helps.
Mario Chávez
PhD Translation & Terminology student, Aveiro University, Portugal ▲ Collapse
| | | | Miruna Cocian
Romania
Local time: 12:56
English to Romanian
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER | Confidentiality issue | Nov 3, 2016 |
Thank you, Mario, for your input. The confidentiality breach example is very helpful.
| | | | | Confidentiality/fidelity | Nov 3, 2016 |
I’ve been translating for over 40 years: 10 years part-time, followed by 20 years as staff translator at an EU Institution (where confidentiality is taken very seriously) and then 10 years as a freelance after I retired.
I have signed a few non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and non-compete agreements (NCAs) over the years and I’ve never breached them: My word and my signature are good as gold: once I put my signature on something I will not infringe it… Anyway, I don’t engag... See more I’ve been translating for over 40 years: 10 years part-time, followed by 20 years as staff translator at an EU Institution (where confidentiality is taken very seriously) and then 10 years as a freelance after I retired.
I have signed a few non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) and non-compete agreements (NCAs) over the years and I’ve never breached them: My word and my signature are good as gold: once I put my signature on something I will not infringe it… Anyway, I don’t engage in active marketing: clients find me, not the other way around.
I learned many years ago that in translation the “golden rule” is fidelity first, expressiveness second, and elegance last. In practice this so-called “golden rule” is broken almost every day, depending on what you’re asked to do: I have one client (a magazine) who is much more interested in the readability of the text than with faithfulness. I also do a lot of transcreation (also known as creative translation or free-style translation) and here what prevails is creativity and originality.
Regarding fidelity, I’ve just remembered an important detail. I was a sworn translator in Belgium where I lived for 30 years (I live in Portugal now and in my home country there are no sworn translators). With my oath at the court I took it upon myself to always render the translation as faithfully and correctly as possible, meaning that one has to keep any source mistakes by placing a [sic] after it.
[Edited at 2016-11-03 13:45 GMT] ▲ Collapse
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| An example of prophylaxis | Nov 3, 2016 |
Just one thing that comes to mind in terms of confidentiality (or perhaps loyalty): because of an urgent situation or work during a weekend with an urgent delivery, I have often been given the chance to contact the end customers of my agency customers. I have been in situations where I know the customer's contact person and had the perfect opportunity to offer my services to them directly.
In order to make immediately apparent to the end customer that I am loyal to my agency custome... See more Just one thing that comes to mind in terms of confidentiality (or perhaps loyalty): because of an urgent situation or work during a weekend with an urgent delivery, I have often been given the chance to contact the end customers of my agency customers. I have been in situations where I know the customer's contact person and had the perfect opportunity to offer my services to them directly.
In order to make immediately apparent to the end customer that I am loyal to my agency customer, I always begin my emails with "Hello/Dear so-and-so, My customers **name of the agency** asked me to send you.... / Following instructions from My customers **name of agency**", I hereby send you.... The goal is to block the idea in the mind of the end customer that, eventually, they could contact me directly for their translation needs. ▲ Collapse
| | | | | I do exactly the same... | Nov 3, 2016 |
Tomás Cano Binder, CT wrote:
Just one thing that comes to mind in terms of confidentiality (or perhaps loyalty): because of an urgent situation or work during a weekend with an urgent delivery, I have often been given the chance to contact the end customers of my agency customers. I have been in situations where I know the customer's contact person and had the perfect opportunity to offer my services to them directly.
In order to make immediately apparent to the end customer that I am loyal to my agency customer, I always begin my emails with "Hello/Dear so-and-so, My customers **name of the agency** asked me to send you.... / Following instructions from My customers **name of agency**", I hereby send you.... The goal is to block the idea in the mind of the end customer that, eventually, they could contact me directly for their translation needs.
Over the years, I've been told several times by my client (a Belgian translation agency) to get in touch with so and so (their end client) if I happen to have a question about that particular job. Once (during an official holiday in Belgium), the agency even asked me to deliver directly to the end client. I always say that I’m acting on behalf of my client, the Agency XXXX.
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