Confidentiality Compromised
Strict confidentiality in translation business is a requirement that some fellow translators do not seem to be fully aware of as evidenced by a recent post somewhere else.
A colleague asking for help in translating some English terms into Turkish posted a whole commercial letter attached to his question without omitting a word:
Dear X
Main body of the letter
Sincerely yours,
Mr Y.
It was a letter from the top manager of a European company to the top manager of a Turkish company discussing some business strategies and areas of possible cooperation in shipping services.
As you would guess, shipping is a highly competitive business, and having a B2B private letter posted at an international support forum means publishing it online and delivering it to an indeterminate number of recipients including competitors and therefore exposing someone else’s business to unforeseeable risks. Confidentiality was indeed compromised!
I warned the colleague to delete his post and post only the terms for which he is seeking help in Turkish translation, or if context is required, edit the letter so as to render it unrecognizable. Before getting a response from the colleague, the forum moderator, a responsive and educated translator herself, squashed the question deleting the post altogether. And she mentioned “confidentiality” as one of the reasons for squashing the question. Thanks to her, the confidentiality of the letter in question was saved within minutes!