Sworn translators stabbed in the back by their own licensing authority
Corporate tenders for official translation work
An American tennis player once said, “You can not be serious!” A Scottish character actor used to say, “I don’t believe it!” And, pretty much everywhere these days, people simply ask, “WTF?”
Let me sketch out the situation. Anyone can be a translator. There is no barrier to penetration into the sector. Whether you’re any good will be the test of time, and some clients may ask to see your diplomas.
However, to be a sworn translator, working for the State (and the State in principle may assign its translation tasks ONLY to suitably qualified sworn translators), you must apply to the National Register of Sworn Translators and/or Interpreters, you must adduce your qualifications, you must swear an oath and you must prove your legal knowledge. You can do that by reference to your legal qualifications (as an attorney, for instance) or by taking a separate, special college course, which runs to around 2,000 euros, takes a couple of months.
Once you’ve sworn your oath, the following all apply:
- you may translate written documents for the State from and into the languages for which you have sought homologation and been verified;
- you may do the same for private parties (companies, individuals, etc.) who need sworn translations for official procedures in Belgium and abroad;
- for the State translations, the charges are laid down in secondary legislation and are generally regarded as “on the low side”;
- for private translations, you can charge what the client will pay;
- for both types of translations, there is no guaranteed throughflow. You get what you get and what you don’t get is what you don’t get. The situation is not unlike that of a notary public: they, too, are technically an arm of the government, but no one can guarantee that anyone will want them to purchase their new house for them.
By the law of averages, notaries public get quite a lot of business because there is nowhere else that people can go for these services. They enjoy a sector monopoly. And so do sworn translators. Or, at least, that used to be the case.
The language combinations in which I translate (three Belgian languages plus English, all directions) are charged for at 9.19 cents per word. I don’t get to choose that rate; it is imposed by the government itself. Private clients pay a little more.
The Flemish Region has an exclusive arrangement with a translation firm. Through them, you can get your sworn translations done cheaply or free of charge. I’m not sure which. The thing is that translation firms cannot do sworn translations, because a sworn translator is ALWAYS an individual, not a corporate entity. So, when you use Vlaamse Taalhulp, you will ultimately be served by a subcontractor. You will pay far less than if you went to the subcontractor direct, but the subcontractor receives even less than the 9.19 cents he’d had got if the contract had come from the State. I’m not that sure about the legality of this arrangement, because it creates a monopoly for the translation firm, and Belgium is supposed to be a free market economy. However, I’m pretty certain it is ethically questionable: charge all translators the same fees and impose the same requirements to qualify for the job of sworn translator, and then section off a chunk of the market to a firm that cannot even compete itself as a sworn translator.
That, however, is the Flemish Region, and I have myself lost business to this system. Now, the Belgian State is issuing calls for tenders for sworn translation work. It is by-passing its own certified translators to re-engage them through the offices of a private middleman that, itself, cannot ever legally qualify as a sworn translator, and I just wonder how far under the price of 9.19 cents a word you’ll be paid then? It is the same system as is used by the EU institutions, and that, too, is iniquitous, as I found out to my cost when I attended an info session for Trad19 (translation outsourcing 2019) in The Hague. The tender process was open to all EU citizens (plus the citizens of other, non-EU states, like Switzerland, North Macedonia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina). However, the quality test trials would be arranged such that it was impossible for a single translator to compete (they’d be coterminous). Only groups, collectives, cooperatives and companies of translators could compete. So all EU citizens is not quite the truth.
When the translation firms have squeezed all the self-employed translators out of the market, tell me: who, then will be doing their hard-won, subcontracted, certified translation work? There’s always a lobby at work somewhere. And the lobby for self-employed translators isn’t working. It must be the lobby for the translation firms’ sector that is booking this outrageous, slap-in-the-face success.
I’ve never been—pardon the expression—so shat upon in all my born days.