For years, document translations have been increasingly offered digitally and online. Hiring a non-resident translator who can only be contacted online has become standard practice, that is, unless a sworn translator is required. Only when a sworn translator’s stamp is absolutely necessary is the postal service used or a local service preferred.
In the case of the online translator, he or she is usually contacted by e-mail and the scanned document is also sent by e-mail. And, of course, the client receives the translation by e-mail. This is considered very insecure according to today’s IT security guidelines. E-mail is like a postcard, which can be read on its digital journey by everyone who is somehow involved in its forwarding, just as a postcard can be read in seconds by the letter carrier or other postal workers.
This can be countered in two ways:
Either the sender requires the translator’s signature on a confidentiality agreement (which of course does not secure the digital transmission). If this is done insecurely, the declaration is only binding on the translator.
Or alternatively, the translator and his or her team or agency may offer a secure online platform in the cloud that allows encrypted transmission of the document and its translation. However, this service is hardly affordable for many small teams or individual translators. While it is becoming easier to set up such a service in the cloud, not everyone has the skills or the time to deal with it.
The ilès translation team offers exactly these solutions:
– First, we sign the client’s confidentiality agreement if the client requests it or if it is necessary for legal reasons.
– In addition, we also require employees individually to sign the declaration if the employee is working intensively on the project, and / or if the client deems it necessary.
– We also offer a cloud service via our provider, which allows a fully encrypted connection and secure download and upload of documents.
Our experience shows that clients who need a small translation of up to five, often short documents, usually do not value this type of security. When a translation requires more security, they either use a large agency that provides appropriate tools or use an external online platform such as smartcat.com, which is also encrypted.
At ilès, we are happy to offer these cloud services for both small and large projects. The process simply involves setting up a new folder online that the client and our translators can use to access and share data.
Of course, this service can also be done via Google Drive, Dropbox or similar providers, which is what some of our competitors are doing. Only those who have the often quite complex web address can access the folder.
We prefer to use our own cloud services, because we alone have the access rights and grant them to only the people involved in the project. This means that our translators can only access the data during the project, after which it is deleted.
By Arne