TSP Questions and Answers

Freelance Translators, Translation Agency Companies, Translation House Companies and the BS EN 15038 Translation Service Provider’s Standard

We believe that every translation service provider (TSP) can and should take appropriate steps to be able to demonstrate conformity with the BS EN 15038 standard as soon as possible. If you provide translation services – this means you!

The extension of the concept TSP includes

• Individual freelance Translators
• Micro or SME translation companies
• Large or multinational translation companies
• Translation agency i.e. any of the above entirely or partially outsourcing the translation process to translators who may come from any of the above.

Reference to all of these

Questions and Answers

The following are based on our expectation of potential questions from statements and queries we received during the development period of the standard and the ATC road show that followed.

If we have not answered your query please send an e-mail to chris.cox@geolang.com and we will respond within 48 hours. With your permission we will subsequently add question and answer to this list with or without crediting the entry to you.

 

Q from all types of TSP. A good deal of our work involves translations in circumstances that makes revision by an independent translator impossible.
How can we conform to the standard when we want to retain this work?

 

Answer. You can “scope” your application of the standard by taking the following steps to overcome the problem

• Analyse the translation services you currently supply against the standard to identify those that can meet all the requirements of the standard and those that cannot,
• Apply the standard to all your translation services in so far as it is possible to do so.
• Services that can and do meet the standard in full can then be demonstrated to do so by conformity assessment activity (i.e. by self declaration or certification) and can be advertised to the world as meeting the EN 15038 standard
• Label or re-label the identified services appropriately to indicate full or partial conformity to the standard
• Take steps to ensure that clients and potential clients will be able to clearly differentiate and understand which of your services meet all of the standard’s requirements and those that meet most but not all.
• All your services can then benefit from the ability to design your contract terms to appropriately include the provisions of the standard and

Q from Freelancers.
Why should I bother with conforming to the standard, especially since I am already getting in more work than I can cope with?

 

Answer.

1. All the reasons for using standards as tools to do business apply to people operating a business on their own as much as to any other business.
   See our general information on business benefits from use of standards and if any further persuasion is required of its suitability for sole trading business, please contact us.
2. As more and more TSPs take up the standard and it becomes better known generally, so will the expectation that TSPs are operating in conformity to the standard become a general expectation. If you start now, you can take your time and do the job well, if you wait until that has already happened, you will have already begun to lose ground against your peers and you may have to rushed the implementation simply to meet a client’s requirement with all the risks that entails.
   
3. Any services you provide to translation companies on a regular basis should be the first to be considered for bringing into conformity with the standard and there are at least two reasons for this
1. They are likely to be the first sector of your industry to begin to make use of the standard.
2. If they have an expectation for you to be operating in conformity to the standard, they will already be operating to the standard themselves for this type of translation work. Being required by the standard to have the revision carried out by an independent translator, you will also have satisfied this requirement either at their expense or at least a shared cost by agreement.

 

Q. from Translation Agencies.
We are purely an agency for translators and do not employ any translators. Is the standard applicable to us?

Very much so, the standard is about translation services culminating in the delivery of a translation that is fit for purpose, the translation process is only one part of the standard.

 

Q. from users of Translation Services or Translation Service Providers.
What is the difference between accredited registered certification, non-accredited registered certification, self declaration, standardized self declaration and registered self-declaration, and against BS EN 15038?

 

Accredited Registered Certification [Imparting Highest Confidence]
This means that the successful assessment of conformity to the standard has been carried out by a certification body that has itself been assessed to be competent to do so by an Accreditation Body (e.g. in the UK, the United Kingdom Accreditation Service (UKAS)). Upon successful assessment, the attesting certificate is registered by the certification body, including a licence for the successful applicant to use the certification body’s official logo for the scheme as directed by the licence.

 

Non-Accredited Certification [Suspect Confidence]

This means that the body providing certification services is not accredited by a government recognised accreditation body to be competent to issue the type of certification offered as assessed against the relevant International or Regional conformity assessment standard. It is important therefore to look for signs/marks/symbols of accreditation when choosing a certification body -unless there is a good reason for using such a body whose integrity is well known to you and which is not accredited for some good reason.

 

Self Declaration [Suspect confidence]

This means that the service provider has assessed itself (or employed an independent assessor) as being in conformity with the BS EN 15038 standard and declares this to be the case to its customers. The level of confidence imparted by this method is entirely in the perception (or actual knowledge) of the client with reference to the service provider’s integrity and competence in carrying out the appropriate assessment. If an independent assessor is known to have been employed, the confidence level is raised.

 

Standardized Self Declaration [Checkable confidence]

This means that the service provider has assessed itself (or employed an independent assessor) as being in conformity with the BS EN 15038 standard in accordance with the requirements of the ISO/IEC 17050 standard Part 1 and declares this to be the case to its customers providing evidence of the basis upon which the declaration is made e.g. audit report in accordance with the requirements of Part 2 of that standard. In any case we would recommend making this evidence easily accessible for customers and potential customers to increase there confidence in your integrity and level of competence in assessment. (the standard only requires production of this evidence on request)

 

Registered Self Declaration [Totally suspect confidence and deprecated activity]

This means that the service provider has made a declaration of conformity to a standardization or certification body and upon payment of a fee is licensed to add the logo of the certification body to its declaration. Unless otherwise made known there may not have been any assessment carried out as here is usually no checking process carried out by the certification body. In our opinion this makes the integrity of both the service provider and the certification body suspect.