I do not understand international contracts, and I'm pretty sure that I need to Thread poster: Deives Collins
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Hello to all you very helpful people!
I'm a translator who's trying to start out from the very bottom, and I think I have a good start on a lot of things, but today I'm focusing on the important topic of contracts. I am based in the US, and I translate from Latin American Spanish into American English. I'm not super picky about what types of documents I want to translate, but literary translation is probably the best use of my skills and the setting I'll be happiest in.
... See more Hello to all you very helpful people!
I'm a translator who's trying to start out from the very bottom, and I think I have a good start on a lot of things, but today I'm focusing on the important topic of contracts. I am based in the US, and I translate from Latin American Spanish into American English. I'm not super picky about what types of documents I want to translate, but literary translation is probably the best use of my skills and the setting I'll be happiest in.
I was hitting a wall for a long time even trying to find pro bono or volunteer-based work to establish a work history, but I finally broke through that wall when I started to look in different places. I went to the website Wattpad.com, searched for poems (a specialty of mine) written in Spanish without very many views, and messaged the authors. I had three small pro bono projects within a few days, and it's clear that I could continue this indefinitely for strictly pro bono work. Obviously, if I knew exactly the right steps to take, I'd already be very successful, but I'm thinking from this experience that I will have the most success if I try contacting new clients that are based in Latin America, specifically publishers but maybe independent authors. (Like I said, it doesn't have to be literary, but that seems like the most promising direction for me at the moment.)
So: I'm also working on a personal website for myself, and I decided to make it my task today to decide on my "standard contract" and make that available to view on the website. As I thought about that and looked at sample contracts, I remembered that most of my business will likely be international (considering there is no shortage of well established linguists to work in this language pair domestically), and so I will need to be knowledgeable on how to write contracts for clients in several different countries, maybe (probably?) in Spanish. I'm not even all that comfortable with legal text in English, so this seems like a potentially dangerous prospect to me.
I feel like there must be other translators who were in this same situation when starting out, but I so far haven't been able to find very much information that's tailored to translators. I'm not expecting someone to provide me some magical sample contract that will solve all my problems, but going to the other extreme, I can't just throw myself into studying Latin American and international contract law for a few years to master this information. So I'm hoping that someone more knowledgeable than me can point me in the right direction, and maybe speak from experience about industry norms regarding this kind of thing?
Thanks very much in advance for everyone's time and assistance! ▲ Collapse
| | | | | | Adieu 
Ukrainian to English
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| Contracts for your side should be pretty plain | Sep 3, 2021 |
...if you need em at all.
"Payable X days after invoice, with penalties such and such for late payment"
"Copyright not transferred to customer until payment in full"
"All disputes in [your preferred jurisdiction] under [your preferred law]"
"Translator NameHere cannot be held responsible for losses greater than the invoice value for any reason whatsoever"
And maybe some clause about adding your name to commercial publication of your work unless anonymi... See more ...if you need em at all.
"Payable X days after invoice, with penalties such and such for late payment"
"Copyright not transferred to customer until payment in full"
"All disputes in [your preferred jurisdiction] under [your preferred law]"
"Translator NameHere cannot be held responsible for losses greater than the invoice value for any reason whatsoever"
And maybe some clause about adding your name to commercial publication of your work unless anonymity is specifically negotiated and paid for in advance ▲ Collapse
| | | | John Fossey
Canada
Local time: 11:29
Member (2008)
French to English
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| The basic rule of contracts applies to all countries | Sep 3, 2021 |
The basic rule of contracts is:
Offer + Acceptance = Contract
If one party offers to do or provide something and the other party accepts the offer, a contract is formed. This simple rule is frequently overlooked and people are sometimes surprised to find they are in a binding contract that they had not realised they were in, having accepted terms without realising their significance.
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Deives Collins
United States
Local time: 11:29
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER | Extremely valuable insight | Sep 4, 2021 |
A huge thanks to everyone who's commented so far, in particular to Arabic & More for the extremely specific resources relevant to literary translation! I haven't had the time to fully look them over of course, but they appear to be game-changing for someone without contacts in the field. Best of luck with your book as well!
| | | | Joakim Braun
Sweden
Local time: 17:29
German to Swedish
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John Fossey wrote:
The basic rule of contracts is:
Offer + Acceptance = Contract
If one party offers to do or provide something and the other party accepts the offer, a contract is formed. This simple rule is frequently overlooked and people are sometimes surprised to find they are in a binding contract that they had not realised they were in, having accepted terms without realising their significance.
If a contract's or agreement's terms are unreasonable, deviate from standard market practises and exploit a disparity of power or a misunderstanding, they may not necessarily be binding (in the jurisdictions I know anything about).
| | | | Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 16:29
Serbian to English
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| Not to forget | Sep 5, 2021 |
Adieu wrote:
...if you need em at all.
"Payable X days after invoice, with penalties such and such for late payment"
"Copyright not transferred to customer until payment in full"
"All disputes in [your preferred jurisdiction] under [your preferred law]"
"Translator NameHere cannot be held responsible for losses greater than the invoice value for any reason whatsoever"
And maybe some clause about adding your name to commercial publication of your work unless anonymity is specifically negotiated and paid for in advance
another VERY IMPORTANT addition:
translator is responsible ONLY for the translation as delivered to the immediate customer, not for any subsequent modifications (by editors, proofreaders, or anyone else).
IF you deliver to an agency who then gives your translation to some "editor" who "improves it" by making a dog's dinner of it, you want to wash your hands in advance if the final client starts complaining.
Trust me, this far from some being some "hypothetical case that would never happen".
[Edited at 2021-09-05 02:25 GMT]
| | | | Deives Collins
United States
Local time: 11:29
Spanish to English
TOPIC STARTER | New responders appreciated | Sep 9, 2021 |
To the new responders, thanks very much! Please excuse my delay in responding; I've had to attend to a death in the family this week.
One specific question I have is which country I should generally use as the "host" country for international contracts. I would imagine many are willing to base the contract in the US, but there may of course be those in Latin America or elsewhere who would prefer to "host" the contract in their own country. What is a sensible approach to this?
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