Professional Standards and Translator Ethics
Obligations run in several directions
Professional standards address fidelity and completeness to the source, confidentiality toward the client and the people named in the text, competence toward the task, and transparency toward everyone involved. A certified translator is expected to accept only work within their language combination and subject competence, to prepare adequately, and to disclose any limitation that could affect the result.
Core duties
- Confidentiality: treat source material, drafts, glossaries, and client identities as confidential; secure their storage and transmission.
- Impartiality and conflict of interest: decline or disclose assignments where a personal, financial, or family interest could bias the rendering.
- Accuracy and completeness: do not add, omit, or "improve". If the source contains an evident error, the usual route is to translate it as written and flag it to the client rather than silently correct it.
- Scope of certification: never claim credentials, certification, or specialist expertise you do not hold; do not certify documents outside the authorised language pair or procedure.
- Continuing development: keep terminology and subject knowledge current.
Traps in exam questions
The tempting wrong answer is usually the helpful-sounding one: quietly fixing an inconsistency, softening an insult to protect a client, accepting a rush job in an unfamiliar specialty, or discussing an assignment's content with a third party. Ethics items reward the disclosed, documented, bounded choice.
Rule of thumb
Before acting, ask two questions: Who is affected if I do this? and Would I be comfortable if the client and the certifying body saw exactly what I did? If either answer is uncomfortable, disclose and decline rather than proceed quietly.