Having a clear and well-defined translation process is crucial to ensuring on-time delivery as well as high-quality translations and to avoiding heightened effort and expense for project management. However, another crucial aspect of a sophisticated translation process is often overlooked: data protection.
Companies that work with sensitive data, whether in the legal, financial, or healthcare sector, must prioritize data security at every stage of the translation process. Such protection involves communication via end-to-end encrypted channels as well as the use of secure technologies.
Have you ever considered the number of hands a translation goes through before it is published? No matter how much an enterprise does for data security on its own systems, the risk of unauthorized access always arises as soon as texts are sent to external translators. It is therefore important to know exactly who carries out your translation jobs and how secure the technical infrastructure of the parties involved in the process is.
A company develops an innovative product and intends to keep the time-to-market as short as possible. To make this possible, the translation of the manual is commissioned in the run-up to the market launch.
The company thus engages a language service provider and determines the date on which the manual will be complete. The project is quite large, and to meet the associated deadline, the language service provider forwards parts of the project to one of its subcontractors. Both the language service provider and the subcontractor make use of freelance translators. One of these translators is very busy, as he is already working on a number of other projects. However, as he does not want to turn down the offer, he asks a fellow translator whether he could handle half of the job. The translator accepts the job and receives the document by e-mail. The finished translation goes back to the first freelancer, who sends it to the subcontractor, who in turn forwards it to the company’s language service provider. Following a final quality check, the finished manual is submitted to the company.
In typical processes like these, information is inevitably exposed to unnecessary risks. Often, the non-disclosure agreements that are concluded to reduce such risks are not sufficient, as it is difficult to verify whether they are duly complied with.
It is usually the case that the larger your enterprise is, the more your supply chain will fall short in terms of transparency. For example, external translators may store your translations on their local systems and inadvertently make them available to third parties. Moreover, a process that is not transparent involves a greater risk of human error. For instance, you may not know anything about the network used, e-mails may not always be secure, and messages can accidentally be sent to the wrong address.
The more effective approach is to combine non-disclosure agreements with suitable technologies in order to make your translation processes more secure.
By using a translation management system (TMS), you can easily increase your information security by establishing a closed workspace and system environment. Translation management systems such as the Across Language Server combine the translation environment with a translation memory and a terminology system and offer numerous project management and workflow control tools. For example, smart process automation can help prevent your projects from mistakenly being sent to unauthorized recipients.
It is crucial to emphasize that closed supply chains and data protection in translation do not mean that companies are left in the dark with no insight into what is going on in the translation process. On the contrary, companies should have the ability to monitor and review the entire process to ensure that their data is sufficiently protected.
The first step would be to define your translation processes and map them in the system. Additionally, you should initiate measures to retain data sovereignty within your company:
An additional tip: Open communication is a vital aspect of the cooperative working relationship with language service providers or translators. Before you make changes to the process, explain to your contact why you intend to implement highly restrictive settings. For you as the customer, it is of course also beneficial to know how the new settings will impact your translation partner.
An additional benefit of a translation management system is that you can securely connect machine translation systems via interfaces. If you integrate machine translation services such as AcrossMT, DeepL Pro, SYSTRAN, or KantanMT into a translation management system for professional use, you maintain control over your data sovereignty. You can thus boost your productivity and cut costs while at the same time protecting your information according to advanced data protection standards. On the other hand, processing texts with a free online translation tool could mean that valuable data is revealed to the respective provider. Others could have unlimited access to this data, as a number of users noticed, to their great chagrin, in 2017. Google indexed thousands of web pages of the free translation service Translate.com, including web pages containing sensitive user information. The data included e-mail addresses, telephone numbers, passwords, and even entire contracts. The free services process the data in order to improve their translation suggestions. In fact, this is also what the companies’ GTCs say – so legally speaking, they are actually on solid ground.
In today’s globalized world, companies may face challenges in effectively and securely translating sensitive data if they do not have a well-defined translation process in place. When analyzing this process, many managers come to the realization that they need to implement additional measures to safeguard both the supply chain and data.
Some of these measures align with those necessary for data protection in general, such as using encrypted communication channels and establishing confidentiality agreements with translators or translation service providers. Nevertheless, these measures should be combined with the use of a translation management system. This provides a closed workspace and system environment as well as tools for automating and monitoring translation processes. A TMS is especially crucial for enterprises that use (or plan to use) machine translation, as a TMS enhances data protection.
It is essential for companies to acknowledge the importance of data protection and closed supply chains in translation. Such enterprises can ensure the security of their data at all times only by adopting an integrated approach that incorporates appropriate technology, well-defined translation processes, and open communication.
Are you looking for help in setting up the right translation process for you and your organization, or would you like to learn more about Across Language Server and how its TMS can support you with your data protection needs? Contact us for a non-binding consultation or an online demo.
