According to ISO 17100 Translation services — Requirements for translation services [see footnote], a language professional is qualified if there is documented evidence that they meet at least one of the following requirements in section 3.1.4 (as amended in 2017):
a) has obtained a degree in translation, linguistics or language studies or an equivalent degree that includes significant translation training, from a recognized institution of higher education;
b) has obtained a degree in any other field from a recognized institution of higher education and has the equivalent of two years of full-time professional experience in translating;
c) has the equivalent of five years of full-time professional experience in translating.
These criteria are realistic for only a handful of language combinations out of over a million potential combinations. During the July 10th meeting, it was pointed out that the number of language combinations is highly reduced if English is used as a pivot language. However, the use of a pivot language introduces issues.
If we impose these criteria only when both languages in a combination are high-resource languages, then, for low-resource languages, we can use the ASTM F2575-23 criteria, which are focused on finding a language professional with evidence of needed competence in the following six areas:
- Translation (including research skills), but no degree or minimum number of years of experience being required.
- Linguistic skills, including language proficiency test scores and years of residence and professional activity in relevant countries.
- Subject matter expertise (for domain-specific language) and cultural knowledge (for general language).
- Type-of-text competence relevant to the project at hand.
- Task competence relevant to the project (localization, subtitling, audio transcription, etc).
- Technology competence in the tools relevant to the project.
Bottom line, a professional translator can qualify using either the ASTM or the ISO criteria mentioned above.
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The text in this document that has been taken from ISO 17100, Translation projects – General guidance, is reproduced with the permission of the International Organization for Standardization, ISO. This standard can be obtained from any ISO member organization and from the website of the ISO Central Secretariat at the following address: www.iso.org. Copyright remains with ISO.