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Trial by Translation

Official institutions in Spain often require documents not in Spanish to be accompanied by an 'official translation'. Louise Ferguson steps into the world of those much-maligned professionals, the official translators
© Louise Ferguson 1999

"I wouldn't like to be a foreigner on trial in Spain." So says Josep Peñarroja, president of the Association of Sworn Translators and Interpreters of Catalonia, the largest of the professional associations of traductores jurados, or official translators.

Peñarroja is concerned that the current trend of putting court interpreting and translating services out to tender will lead to a deterioration in the quality of the service, and maybe even to miscarriages of justice.

"Official translators are effectively being removed from the court system. The service has gone out to tender in a number of court jurisdictions, including the Basque Country, Valencia, Girona and Tarragona, and the same is happening in Barcelona."

Contracts are being awarded to the lowest bidders, which tend to be private language academies offering translation work on the side. "These days we only go to court for the rich, when a lawyer takes us along.

"Qualified colleagues are being offered risible rates for working as subcontractors on these court contracts - as little as Pta5 ($0.03) per word in the case of one of the Tarragona bidders. Really, I'd be surprised if they managed to get anyone competent or qualified to work at that price.

"The Generalitat says we're expensive. Then they contract a tourism academy to train their police, the Mossos d'Esquadra, as interpreters. Fine if all they need to do is tell tourists the time, but not exactly what's called for when taking evidence in criminal proceedings."

Spanish law defines who is an official translator. The definition includes consuls and judges as well as individuals who have passed the intérprete jurado exams and have been recognised by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

"The peculiar situation in Spain is that the law regulates who can produce a sworn or official translation, but not which translations need to be 'official'. The latter is down to custom and practice." Now the trend is not to produce an official translation unless someone demands it. "For example, a lawyer may supply an ordinary translation for a court case, and only have it sworn if the other side raises an objection." The only organisations consistently requiring official translations these days are central government departments, such as the Ministry of Education.

Mismatches and misnomers
The issue of training is, in the words of Peñarroja,"another issue to make one weep". The exams for official translators are on the one hand difficult to pass, but on the other do not fairly reflect the skills required of a translator. "The official name of the profession is in fact intérprete jurado i.e. sworn interpreter, although we are really translators - the exam's got nothing to do with interpreting."

The exam, which comes under the auspices of the Foreign Ministry, comprises four sections: two general translations, one into Spanish and the other from Spanish into the second language; an oral; and finally a legal or economic translation into Spanish.

"The Ministry doesn't issue any guidelines or marking criteria, so nobody knows what the examiners are looking for. The general translation papers can be on anything at all. One year they set a text by [Miguel de] Unamuno, and sometimes they set a Spanish text translated into another language, which the candidate then has to translate back into Spanish.

"The exam is not a test of professional competence. No dictionaries are allowed for the general translation papers, which is absurd. And carrying out reverse translations [into another language] professionally is a mistake. It's fine as long as all you're doing is birth certificates and similar documents with a standard format. But we each have our own 'personal frontier', beyond which we shouldn't step. Otherwise the result is Spanglish."

"Pathetic" is the word Peñarroja uses to describe the oral exam: "It's is not a test of spoken competence - people have passed with one-word responses." The most difficult part, however, is the legal translation paper. "Very few people pass the exam, maybe fifteen in each language combination each year, and it would be unusual to pass first time."

'Agencias maruja'
He sees the translation profession becoming more disorganised and less professional by the day, and is scathing of the role played by the translation agencies. "Once upon a time, wealthy men set up their wives in business with a fashion boutique or a haberdashery shop to stop them getting bored. Now they set them up with a translation agency. These are what I call the agencias maruja [housewife agencies], which are the bane of the profession. Many of these people don't know the first thing about translation, but often they or their husbands have the personal and business connections that ensure a steady stream of lucrative work."

Agencies often describe official translators as expensive, "but usually we are charging less than they are," claims Peñarroja. "Our association has a recommended scale of fees for official translations, but many of the jobs we do are ordinary translations at ordinary self-employed translator rates."

The self-employed cannot, however, afford to place colour display adverts in Yellow Pages as the agencies do, "so customers end up going to the agencies rather than coming directly to us when they need an official document translated." Agencies include the magic words traducciones juradas in their adverts, but most of them merely fence the work off to official translators, and then bill the customer for twice what they pay the translator, or more. "An agency may pay an official translator Pta90 ($0.63) a line, but charge the customer Pta180 or even Pta250 ($1.26/1.75)."

The highly fragmented nature of the profession has put increasing amounts of power in the hands of the agencies. Some translation associations themselves seem to be vehicles for promoting the private business interests of their executive members rather than disinterested promotion of the profession. "There are many translation firms calling themselves associations or institutions."

There are also official translators who bring the profession into disrepute. "Some official translators 'sell their stamp' to agencies. The agency pays around Pta500 ($3.50) for each sheet stamped and signed by the translator. So the agency is making 300% profit."

The way forward
Peñarroja would like to see a unified profession, capable of monitoring professional standards, promoting training and raising the profile of translators. "We're self-employed and so we're exploited. Translators tend to be a bit intellectual and not very business-like."

Since the 1960s, there have been several attempts at setting up a translation colegio [officially-recognised professional association] in Spain, but all have fallen by the wayside. "The government isn't interested in any more professional colegios."

The impetus is now coming from Catalonia, where two translation organisations are laying the groundwork for the Catalonian equivalent, a col.legi, open to all translators, official or not. "It's not the ideal solution, but in the circumstances it's the best we can do." In the meantime, few official or ordinary translators are protected by professional indemnity insurance, and customers never complain.

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