Legal translators and confidentiality

Legal translators have two main kinds of customers: individuals and companies. They usually require very different texts to be translated, but one thing they both have in common is a need for confidentiality.

Let’s take the first type: individuals. Common reasons for requiring professional translation (especially certified translation) are stressful and extremely personal events: anything from marriage, divorce and custody issues, through immigration and job applications, to wills, tax demands, medical reports or even criminal trials.

In all these cases, you don’t want anyone involved talking about your intensely private business, whether a lawyer, a doctor or a translator.

Then there are companies who need a translator to deal with matters that are company secrets: internal reports, patent applications, disputes with customers, tax issues, strategic plans or mergers & acquisitions.

The last thing they need is someone involved inadvertently leaking information that could be overheard by journalists or industry colleagues with all the risk that entails or the rumours that can spread.

Naturally, it is not uncommon for the latter to ask translators to sign an NDA so they have a contractual obligation to keep their private information properly protected. However, in most cases companies do not think to do that before sending documents for translation, and individuals practically never do.

We are always more than happy to sign an NDA because we want our clients to feel protected. But at the same time, on one level, it is entirely unnecessary because a principle of our work is that ALL of the information we receive should be kept confidential and not shared with others, regardless of whether or not we have formally signed an NDA. It is a matter of basic professionalism.

Translators should never go around telling people that this company is having problems with the taxman or that company is planning redundancies. And it is a fundamental principle of the way we work to never, ever do that.

Once your information has come to us, we do not discuss it with anyone else because it is essential that our clients can trust us implicitly.

It is our view that since a translator’s work deals with intimate and sensitive information, it must always be kept secret. Regardless of whether or not there is a formal legal obligation, it is a matter of basic personal and professional ethics.