A Comparison of US and European Standards for Translation Services

n June 2006, ASTM International (originally known as the American Society for Testing and Materials) issued the Standard Guide for Quality Assurance in Translation (1). Simultaneously, the CEN (European Committee for Standardization, comprising standardization bodies of 27 member states of the European Union) published European Standard EN 15038:2006 Translation Services - Service requirements (June 2006) (2).

To date (December 2007), only five national bodies have officially published this standard as part of their national catalogue of applicable standards, namely Germany, France, UK, the Netherlands, and Austria.

Any genuine effort to comply with the Standard requirements will bring about greater organizational effectiveness.

The purpose of this article is to discuss the issue of standards as applied to the translation industry, defining the purpose and contents of the translation standards both in the US and in the European Union, reviewing present trends in the field and raising issues with regards to the application of standards (assessment, compliance, certification) from technical, practical, and marketing standpoints.

Readers are invited to respond, submit questions and raise issues on the TJ's blog.

Since we will be talking about standards (in translation), let us have a look first at what standard means.

Ordinary language

In ordinary language, standard used as a noun can have the following meanings (Oxford Dictionary):

1. A level of quality or attainment.
2. A required or agreed level of quality or attainment.
3. Something used as a measure, norm, or model in comparative evaluations.
4. (Standards) principles of honourable, decent behaviour.
5. A military or ceremonial flag.
6. An upright water or gas pipe.
7. A tree that grows on an erect stem of full height.
8. A shrub grafted on an erect stem and trained in tree form.

For the purpose of our discussion, 3 meanings seem relevant:

1. Level of quality
2. Required or agreed, and
3. Measure for comparison purpose

[Interestingly enough, the modern word 'standard' comes from the Old French 'estendart' (a military or ceremonial flag). And it is amusing to find that translation companies claiming that their services comply with translation standards display their new officially approved status (certificate) using a ... flag!

Below are a few typical 'Flags' of these modern translation warriors:

So a standard refers to quality, and as a translator/translation provider, do you care about quality?

You certainly would do when a client complains that in the last English to French translation of a Marketing Report, "outstanding orders of XYZ Proprietary Drug" was translated as "commandes exceptionnelles pour le médicament XYZ" (instead of "commandes en souffrance" - back orders! (Real life story heard recently at a meeting of translation professionals in Strasbourg).

But which quality?

Final product quality? Translator's quality? Quality of your final revision/check procedure? Or quality of your processes for selecting translators and/or subcontracting, or managing the whole translation process, etc.?

This leads to two other interesting ideas:

The second interesting point is measurement and comparison. How can I measure the quality of my translations? Are Robert's translations better than mine?

At this point of the discussion you might say that so far we have been stating the obvious!

Maybe we need the help of the 'pros' now.

So let us hear what the standardization experts have to say about it.

Techno language

The British Standard Institute (BSI) defines a 'standard' as:

"A document, established by consensus and approved by a recognized body, that provides, for common and repeated use, rules, guidelines or characteristics for activities or their results, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context" (3).

Now we know that a standard is a document, including:

Guidelines or

Characteristics

That cover activities or results, and

Let us get into a little more detail as regards the definition of a standard.

According to the ISO (International Organization for Standardization):

"Standards can be broadly sub-divided into three categories, namely product, process and management system standards. The first refers to characteristics related to quality and safety for example. Process standards refer to the conditions under which products and services are to be produced, packaged or refined. Management system standards assist organizations to manage their operations. They are often used to help create a framework that then allows the organization to consistently achieve the requirements that are set out in product and process standards." (4)

Does this help?

We now know that there are three kinds of standard:

1. Standards for products (What BSI calls "results")
2. Standards for processes (What BSI calls "activities"), and
3. Standards for management system

Now how does this apply to translation?

1. The product is the document or software delivered to the customer
2. Processes cover the way the translator does the translation (its competences and methods) and/or the way the translation project manager manages translation jobs
3. The management system of the freelance translator/translation agency

Before we review the present translation standards, let say a word about previous standardization/compliance programs for translation companies.

As you are probably aware, the manufacturing industry and other services worldwide have been involved in quality management and improvement programs and campaigns of all kinds from the early seventies, in an effort to compete with the Japanese industry (initially in automotive industry)

One of the 'tools' or methods used to initiate and drive such a process, especially for large industrial firms in relation to their subcontractors, has been the compliance with and certification to the ISO 9000 Series of Standards (9003, 9002 and 9001) conducted in many firms, and presently supplemented by the ISO 14000 Series of Standards on environmental management.

Numerous service companies have also been involved in this standardization process, including some translation companies.

Finding out how many translation companies in the world are ISO 9001 registered proved to be a hard task: searching on the website of the leading French certification body (AFAQ) returned three translation service providers as being ISO 9001 registered in France over a total of 60,000 registered companies. The UK BSI site could not be searched by sector and the German DKSCERT.com server returned 6 German translation services providers as being ISO 9001 certified.

So it would seem that currently very few translation companies are ISO 9001 registered.

Going back to the distinction between the three types of standards, we can say that the ISO 9000 Series Standards are clearly process and quality management system-oriented standards. And as we will see, the new European Standard on translation services does not differ much from these Standards.

Until recently, the translation industry did not have a standard covering all aspects of the translation process. (There were only some partial guidelines or standards: see Note (5)).

However, standards specific to our industry have now been developed. This is a major change: ISO 19001 Standard requirements for instance were general and applicable to all sectors (manufacturing or services), whereas these new standards cover the specific processes we are familiar with (translation, revision...).

Rather than describing these new standards in detail, I will first review European Standard EN 15038, with which I have some first-hand experience in terms of assessment and compliance, providing an overview of the Standard and raising issues with regards to its application.

Then I shall review US Standard Guide F 2575 - 06 based on documentary analysis as I have had no first-hand experience in applying the US Guide to my own practice, identifying the pros and cons and comparing these two Standards.

BSI states: "EN 15038:2006 specifies the requirements for the translation service provider with regard to human and technical resources, quality and project management, the contractual framework, and service procedures. (Note: it does not apply to interpreting services).

The standard offers a description and definition of the entire service and at the same time, it is designed to provide translation service providers with a set of procedures and requirements to meet market needs." (3)

We provide below the Standard's contents, as provided on the British Standard Institute web page (http://www.bsi-global.com/en/Shop/Publication-Detail/?pid=000000000030122045):

General review and appreciation

The above list may seem impressive, and indeed it is!

After a year or so spent assessing my own practice as a translation service provider and making my own processes compliant, and based on my experience in the quality assurance field, my opinion is that this standard encompasses our activity quite extensively and provides many requirements.

List of requirements

A standard specifies a list of requirements to meet in order to conform to the standard ("Thou shalt not ...).

Close review of its content show that this Standard includes about 95 individual items, each stating a different requirement. Some of these 'content' requirements (by content I mean requirements specifying required characteristics of translation product/process) also include documentation requirements.

For instance, Section 3.2.1 (of Chapter 3 Basic requirements) entitled Human resources management states that:

- "Translators shall have the professional competences as specified in 3.2.2"

But, in the same paragraph it also states:

- "The TSP (Translation Service Provider) shall have a documented procedure in place for selecting people with the requisite skills and qualifications for translation projects'.

In ordinary language, it means that there are two requirements: you must have a procedure in place (i.e. 'A specified way to perform an activity', (6)), and secondly, you must have a written document, stating the purpose and scope of activity, what shall be done, by whom, when, where and how, with what means, and how it is controlled and recorded.

For instance, as a freelance translator or translation agency (TSP), if you are to provide translation from English into five other target languages and want to prove (your client or any other third party) compliance with this standard, you will need:

1. to produce a document ('procedure') describing the way you have selected qualified translators (either as employees of your TSP company, or freelance subcontractors) for a particular project.
2. to apply your procedure and show evidence (record) that this particular translator had the stated required competences to do the particular job he/she was assigned to.

Of course, all documents must be kept up to date and amended according to any changes in your activities/processes.

Table 1 below shows the distribution of requirements among the various sections/areas of the Standard.

Table 1: Distribution of European EN 15038 requirements by Standard section/area

Referring back to the three types of standard as stated earlier (namely Product, Process (incl. human resources) and Management, this standard is clearly process- and management-oriented rather than strictly product- or people-specific. It focuses on processes rather than product/service outputs. You will not find any specifications with regards to qualification testing/certification of translators or detailed scale-to-rate final product quality/compliance.

European Standard EN 15038 Issues

Compliance with this standard raises a certain number of issues, especially with regards to the relationship between freelancers and translation agencies.

Subcontracting

For instance Paragraph 5.4.3 Revision states that "The TSP shall ensure that the translation is revised' (and further that "The reviser shall be a person other than the translator...").

If you act as the TSP (i.e. the main and direct contracting party with the client), then your final translation product shall be revised prior to delivery to the client.

If you work as a subcontractor to the TSP (e.g. as freelancer), you might either have your translation job revised by another freelancer before delivery to the TSP, or submit your translation unrevised to your TSP. In this case, the Standard clearly states that "Where a TSP chooses to engage a third party to carry out a translation project or any part thereof, the TSP shall retain the responsibility for ensuring that the requirements of this standard are met with respect to that project or any part thereof."

In my experience, this is going to be a significant issue in our industry, as most agencies do not have their translations revised before delivery to the end-user/client! At least this has been my experience...

Cost

The related issue is cost: TSPs will have to devise a special marketing and selling concept to justify higher costs for added value/quality services.

Third-party Certification or Declaration of Conformity

"Certification is when an accredited third party visits an organization, assesses their management system and issues a certificate to show that the organization abides by the principles set out in the standard, so following industry best practice" (BSI).

This is called "third-party" certification, which is of course the main (and very profitable) business of certification bodies.

But an alternative solution is available to deal with compliance. It is called Declaration of Conformity (the term 'self-certification' shall be avoided to prevent confusion with Third-party certification). This procedure has been used by many manufacturers around the world in many fields and extensively in Europe with regards to the CE conformity marking procedure (7). This should be seriously considered by TSPs, who would have to follow strict rules in accordance with specific ISO Standards requirements (8) for this type of process.

Claiming that one's translation service complies with EN 15038 requirements with no real documented quality management system should be avoided, as the client may ask you to prove it (and rightly so) and ... bring you to court on grounds of false advertising!

How many TSPs are EN 15038 registered?

This is a hard one to answer because there is no central register of certifications/declarations, due to the fact that there are so many certification bodies worldwide. A quick search on Google (as of 05.09.07) returned the following results:

The large number of links found on the German pages is partly due to DIN-CERTCO (the German standardization national body) policy regarding what they call the 'special registration' service. As the DIN-CERTCO website explains (9):

You will find the whole registration process explained on the relevant web page, along with the list of DIN-EN Registration Mark holders (about 250, mostly German, TSPs). If you think your services comply with EN 15038 requirements, you may consider registering with DIN-CERCO. It will cost you ?57, which is a cheap price to pay to have a nice flag on the home page of your website! Of course, this does not attest to your compliance with EN 15038 requirements. At most, it attests to your ... ?57 payment to DIN-CERTCO and ... to the great marketing skills of Germans! To the best of my knowledge, none of the other large standardization bodies in Europe (BSI and AFNOR) offer this service.

Standard scope

Note: The analysis I provide below was carried out on the basis of documentary review alone and not by any attempt to conduct an assessment of Guide's requirements.

Content summary

1. Scope
2. Referenced documents
3. Terminology
4. Significance and use
5. Introduction to Translation
6. Selecting a Translation Service Provider
7. Description of Project Phases
8. Specifications Phase
9. Production Phase
10. Post-Project Review
11. Keywords

General appreciation and review

My opinion is that the US Guide is more of a set of guidelines to follow for both the end-user (client) and the TSP, than stricto sensu a standard stating the requirements for the TSP to comply with in order to obtain external certification. I doubt that a certification body could devise a certification scheme for say third-party certification based on this Guide. The document details factors, rather than requirements, which have to be taken into account to get optimum results in translation tasks, again from both end-user and TSP points of view. It applies as much to in-house translations as to translations performed by external TSPs.

I find this joint approach (end-user) quite refreshing and very promising indeed, as it aims to provide the client with guidelines and involve it in the specification process. Which is, in my experience, very often a weak step in the translation process supply chain (see also below comments about Section 8). In contrast, EN 15038 provides very few useful guidelines for the end-user; in fact it is not intended for end-users (EN 15038 Introduction says: "This document sets out the requirements relating to translation providers"). This is probably a weakness of the European Standard.

As regards definition of terms, Translation Service Provider has been retained in both standards. The US Guide uses the term Editor while the European Standard uses the term Reviser, and introduces the notion of third-party reviewer (a "person assigned by the requester or supplier to evaluate a completed translation for quality or end-user suitability"), which is a useful addition.

What I liked

Overall, I very much appreciated the practical tips and tools provided in the following sections:

• Section 6 (Selecting a TSP): this section addresses issues in the selection of a translator, and applies equally well to the selection process from the end-user (client) perspective to the decision process of a TSP when selecting freelance sub-contractors. I found the specific system and tools provided in this Section and Appendix more operational than the requirements set out in EN 15038, and I intend to use them in my own practice.
• Section 8 (Specifications Phase): again this section provides many useful leads and guidelines to designing translation specifications, which is often a very weak link in the translation process chain, as stated above. Poor quality in translation is often due to a lack of specifications stipulated by the end-user.

The above comments indicate that both standards provide useful and complementary guidelines: while the EN 15038 Standard may provide a more detailed specification of the TSP quality system and translation management framework ('System Standard'), the US Guide provides more practical 'how-to' advice and application tools.

At this point in the discussion, the reader may ask him/her self: is this for me? What benefits can I expect from it?

My own conviction is that it will eventually modify both client-TSP and TSP-translator relationships.

For instance, a translation company wishing to make its organization comply with the Standard's requirements will require its own subcontractors to demonstrate compliance as well.

Compliance benefits

Working according to the Standard requirements and the Standard management system will provide the TSP with the following benefits:

• It will give the TSP a unique opportunity to position its services on the market, and have them singled out against the competition with added selling points, provided it is backed up by a genuine translation management system and ... an effective advertising strategy!
• Any genuine effort to comply with the Standard requirements will bring about greater organizational effectiveness; and establish a continuous improvement process in TSP's operations. For instance tracking and compiling complaints and non-conformities (either internal or external) for traceability purposes will induce corrective and preventive measures for a greater long-term effectiveness.

In a next article, we will review and discuss the essential components of a compliance program, with real-life stories from TSPs that have been through the process.

Working for Translation Agencies as a Freelancer:

A Guide for Novice Translators

he translation profession has recently undergone three important changes: globalization, professionalization, and specialization. Not so long ago translators would mainly operate on local markets, delivering their translations in person. With the advent of the Internet and e-mail, the profession has gone global and geographical boundaries have disappeared. On the one hand, this means that translators may solicit clients from all over the world; on the other hand, it means a markedly larger pool of translators agencies may choose from; hence, increased competition. Combined with the recent rapid development of translator education, the increased competition means that it is more difficult to get into the profession if you do not have sufficient education and training. The market has also evolved into higher specialization which is driven by the growing knowledge of languages, in particular of English, among employees. Easier texts are translated in-house by clients themselves, while more specialized or technically complex ones are outsourced to translation agencies.

My short survey of translation agencies' recruitment websites shows that most agencies require translators to have at least 2 to 5 years' experience (in addition to a language degree and specialist knowledge). It is a recurrent problem of novice translators how to acquire experience if agencies do not want to work with them exactly because they do not have experience, which seems to be a vicious circle. Frustrating as it may seem, remember that many people do get into the profession every year. There are times when professional translators are on holidays or the job is rush and nobody else is available. Your chance will come sooner or later but you have to be ready to emulate and surpass your competitors.

Here are a few tips on how to work with translation agencies.

1. Check the agency. There are several websites where you can do it, for example, Hall of Fame and Shame at http://translatorscafe.com, BlueBoard at http://proz.com, Untrustworthy Translation Agencies at http://translationdirectory.com, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pl-p-t (Polish). In general, it is quite risky to accept an assignment from an agency which does not have a website, uses a yahoo e-mail address or does not answer a phone provided as a contact number. There may be exceptions to this rule, though.
2. Before you accept the job, check whether you are comfortable with its subject matter. If you do not feel competent enough to translate for example a forklift truck manual, refuse the job. The FIT Translator Charter emphasizes that the translator should "have a broad general knowledge and know the subject matter of the translation sufficiently well and refrain from undertaking a translation in a field beyond his competence." As an independent service provider, you are liable for your translation and, anyway, under certain circumstances it may be wise to consider buying a professional indemnity insurance.
3. Before you accept the job, estimate the time you will need to complete it and if it matches the delivery time. You should know your translation speed and the ability to estimate the completion time is part of your translator competence.
4. Check whether the file opens and whether it is the right file for translation. Send a return email confirming its receipt. If a message is of an inquiry-only type, wait for the go-ahead before you start translating.
5. Ask for a Purchase Order/Work Order with payment terms. Check whether it has the right word count (or character count, line count, etc.). The easiest way to do it is to check Statistics in Microsoft Word (Tools>Word Count). Remember to discuss all payment issues before you accept the assignment; for example, whether you charge by a source or target word count, whether your standard translation page is 1800, 1600 or 1500 characters with or without spaces. It is unprofessional to raise your rate during or after the translation process unless you have a really good reason for it.


The Translation Process

6. Read carefully the translation brief/instructions and follow them closely.
7. File name: do not change the file name but simply add an international language code at its end, e.g. PL for Polish, EN for English, unless an agency requests another coding.
8. Layout: it is an industry standard to preserve the source text layout in the target text.

• If you have a source file in an editable format, simply overwrite source sentences. Do not do any additional formatting. In particular, do not use the spacebar to create an indent or start a new page because it may damage the layout. Remember Samuelsson-Brown's commandment "Thou shalt not use the spacebar" from his excellent Practical Guide for Translators (2004: 114).
• If you use a CAT tool, such as SDL Trados, it will be easier to keep the right layout. You will not have to delete the source text as the CAT will do it for you when you clean the file.
• It is natural that the text 'swells' in translation and becomes longer than the source text. It is mainly due to explicitation (regarded by Mona Baker as one of translation universals) whereby information that is implicit in the source text becomes explicit in the target text to enhance its comprehension or fill in knowledge gaps. Secondly, swelling may be caused by systematic differences between languages; for example, a Polish translation is on average 10-20% longer than the corresponding English original, English being a more synthetic and 'compact' language. This may be a problem when translating text fields or forms that have to fit into a predefined space. In such a case you should clarify with the client whether you are to adjust the format (e.g. by decreasing the font by 1 point) or leave it as it is.

1. Tailored style and readability. If you look at a couple of translation agencies' websites and see how they advertise themselves to end clients, you will soon realize that emphasis is placed on functionality and readability: stylistic aptness, lucid translations that read like original, a tailored language style. To prepare a fluent and readable translation, try to adopt your reader's point of view, think of his/her expectations, needs, potential knowledge/cultural gaps. Use an unmarked language--language that does not draw attention to itself, is natural, and idiomatic. It is not infrequent that the source language shows through the translation, the language of translation being referred to as translationese or a third language. It may be difficult to eradicate all source-language interference; nevertheless, it should be limited to the minimum. You should also focus on conveying the meaning in a clear and lucid way. If you don't understand the sentence you've just translated, there's little chance your reader will.
2. Accuracy. Nearly all translation agencies advertise their ability to ensure the highest accuracy. This feature seems to be most appealing to end clients of translations and is an industry standard. As noted in the FIT Translator Charter, "Every translation shall be faithful and render exactly the idea and form of the original--this fidelity constituting both a moral and legal obligation for the translator." Faithfulness is achieved, inter alia, by attention to detail. For example, 'considerably higher' is usually not the same as 'higher', 'nearly 5 times faster' is not the same as '5 times faster', 'beyond reasonable control' is not the same as 'beyond control'. Novice translators are more prone to omitting these little words--obviously, in some cases this may be acceptable but when you are translating a contract, they can make a difference. More serious consequences may follow when a numeral is distorted (e.g. one '0' is lost in the remuneration clause) or when a negation is overlooked. Problems with negation are well illustrated by the case of German surgeons reported by Der Tagesspiegel (http://www.pssjournal.com/content/1/1/5). Having read English instructions, the surgeons understood "non-modular cemented" as "non cemented"/"without cement" and implanted total knee arthroplasties to 47 patients without cement. As a result, most of the patients had to undergo a surgical revision since the procedure required cemented use only.
3. Terminological consistency. You should use consistent terminology within the text as well as in connection with texts that constitute previous discourse. Ask for reference materials, do some research first, go to the company's website to learn their lingo. Queries: if you have terminological problems, report them or ask for clarification in sufficient time to ensure they will not jeopardize the delivery time.
4. Spotting errors: If you spot an error, notify the client or add a translator's note. As recommended by the ITI, "be an independent problem solver, spot things like missing pages and don't pretend that the source text is all right if there is a glaring error. Clients and authors make mistakes and you can actually score brownie points by drawing these to your client's attention".
5. Deadlines (delivery dates)--always keep them. Do not accept a job if it has an unrealistic deadline. If for some unforeseen reason you are unable to meet the deadline, notify the agency in advance so that it can arrange a substitute. The worst thing you can do when you fail to meet the deadline is to stop answering the phone or responding to e-mails; face it and notify the agency how long the delay will be. Most agencies advertise themselves as offering fast turnarounds; if you are late with your translation, the agency will also be late and may face penalties.

   Quality Assurance

6. Do not send incomplete, unfinished or DRAFT translations--only finalized, thoroughly checked files. It is your duty to provide a spotless text so do not expect a reviewer to do a QA check for you. Reviewers are usually remunerated on an hourly basis and it is more expensive for an agency to review a draft translation than a finalized one.
7. Develop your own QA procedures. It is advisable to print out the translation, and read it in paper. Anachronistic as it may seem, you will be surprised how many issues you have overlooked on the screen. A day's interval between translation and proofreading may do miracles (rarely possible, though, when you're faced with fast turnaround times). It is also worth subcontracting a third-party reviewer.
8. Spelling/typos: switch the spell checker on. After you finish your translation, highlight the entire text and change the language setting to your target language because sometimes the spellchecker still remembers the source text language. It is also useful to untick "Ignore words written in capital letters" in Tools>Options, which is a default setting in MS Word - a spelling error in a capitalized title will be glaring. Secondly, remember that the spell checker does not recognize all errors. To give you a real-life example, an English menu in a Polish restaurant has an entry tomato soap instead of tomato soup; obviously, it wouldn't be highlighted by a spell checker as both words do exist. Now, the restaurant has to type-set and print the menu again. Guess who will pay for it?
9. Aesthetic qualities of the translation. Remove any double spaces and check consistency of punctuation use. For example, do all bullets start with small/capital letters throughout the text?
   
10. Things to check:

• Numbers: a distorted number may be a critical error or high-risk error (Pym). For example, if a dose of 0.05 is erroneously changed into 0.5 in translation, it may have fatal consequences.
• Completeness. Check if there are no omitted sentences, paragraphs, bullets in the translation. Omissions are more likely if you translate from a faxed or scanned original rather than from a .doc file.
• Conventions. Adjust conventions to the target audience's expectations: the way numbers are spelled, capitalization and punctuation, page size (letter format more popular in the US), weights and measurements, and currencies if necessary. It is better to spell out dates due to US and UK differences: 1/10/2007 is 10^th January (or rather January 10) in the US and 1^st October in the UK.

This section may be concluded with the recommendation from the ITI's guide How to get money working freelance for translation companies: "Remember that you are only as good as your last job. Competition is stiff and you can't afford to let standards drop at any time." How true!

Customer Relationship Management

1. You work in the service sector and deal with people. Be courteous, helpful and reliable to ensure that the project manager will choose YOU out of 20 other translators s/he has in the database for your language pair.
2. Try to add value to your services. As recommended by Alex Eames in his Translatortips": give them a little more than they expect--a little more than the competition."

   
   Professional Ethics

3. Confidentiality. As a translator, you may have access to protected, restricted, private, insider information. The FIT Charter emphasizes, "The translator shall respect the legitimate interests of the user by treating as a professional secret any information which may come into his/her possession as a result of the translation entrusted to him/her." This information may include trade secrets, proprietary processes and tools of an agency and of its clients. Some agencies require translators to sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) or Confidentiality Agreement before they assign any work.
4. Non-competition. Be loyal to your direct clients and do not solicit assignments from your clients' clients. You may be asked to sign a non-competition/non-solicitation agreement.

   
   Getting paid...

5. Invoice the job: it is convenient to do it on a monthly basis. The invoice should be prepared in a language understandable to the client (or use a two-language version) and should include the agency's PO number. Specify the method of payment (PayPal/Moneybookers, bank transfer, check, etc.) and provide all payment details, such as the SWIFT/BIC code and IBAN number for bank transfers.
6. You may consider opening a PayPal or Moneybookers account which will save you time and money. Wire transfers are expensive, and agencies usually shift their cost to translators. It may take a long time to clear a check outside the USA; for example, from 6 to 12 weeks in Polish banks. With Paypal or Moneybookers, you have the money almost instantly at low charges.
7. In case of delays in payment, contact the agency first to clarify the issue. If no payment is forthcoming, inform the agency politely that unless they pay you by a specified date, you will send their details to non-payers lists. This usually works. There are also more refined ways of getting paid--see discussion forums, for example, at http://proz.com or http://TranslatorsCafe.com.
8. Don't put all your eggs in one basket! If you work for a number of agencies, you minimize the risk. And this will also give you a wonderful feeling of independence.


Useful materials on the web:

• ITI's guide: Getting started--Translation: http://www.iti.org.uk/pdfs/newPDF/05FH_IntoTrans_(20-10-04).pdf
• ITI's How to get money working freelance for translation companies: http://www.iti.org.uk/pdfs/newPDF/08FHMakeMoney_(20-10-04).pdf
• Special Report for Translators. Customers--Make Life Easy for Them and They'll Stay with You by Alex EAMES: http://www.translatortips.net/freerep/freerep.pdf
• FIT Charter: http://www.fit-ift.org/en/charter.php

Excellent books for novice translators

Samuelsson-Brown, G. 2004. A Practical Guide for Translators. 4^th Ed. Multilingual Matters.

Sofer, M. 2006. The Translator's Handbook. 6^th Ed. Schreiber Publishing