News
“Translation and interpreting now regulated by two standards”

UNI (the Italian National Standards Body) website, News Archive, 28/02/2007. Available at: www.uni.com

Translation and interpreting services are now governed by two standards, as the Italian UNI standard 10574:1996 defining the requirements for the services and activities of translation and interpreting companies has been split into two. The new version of UNI standard 10574 defines the services and activities of interpreting companies, and UNI EN 15038 specifies the requirements to be met by Translation Service Providers (TSPs).

Translation
UNI EN 15038:2006 sets forth the basic requirements relating to human and technical resources, quality and project management systems, the client-TSP relationship and procedures in translation services.
Two of the TSP requirements that the standard focuses on are the professional competences of translators and revisers. These include proven translating competence, linguistic and textual competence in the source and target languages, research competence, information acquisition and processing, and cultural and technical competence.
Under the basic requirements, apart from the availability of technical resources, the TSP also needs to have a documented quality management system that includes a statement of quality management system objectives, a process for monitoring the quality of delivered translation services and a process for handling all information and material received from the client.
The standard also focuses on translation service procedures. Primarily, the TSP "shall have documented procedures in place for handling translation projects"; this includes monitoring and supervising the preparation process (which covers administrative, technical and linguistic aspects appropriate to the specific requirements of each translation project), assigning translators and revisers for the project and ensuring contact is maintained with all parties involved in the process, including the client.
In the translation process, the standard specifies the fundamental duties of translators, who "are required to transfer the meaning in the source language into the target language in order to produce a text that is in accordance with the rules of the linguistic system of the target language and that meets the instructions received in the project assignment". Throughout this process, the translator must take into account appropriate terminology, grammar, style compliant with local conventions and, last but not least, the target group and the purpose of the translation.
The standard includes five annexes: project registration details, technical pre-translation processing, source text analysis, style guide and a non-exhaustive list of added value services.

Interpreting
As previously stated, the new Italian standard UNI 10574:2007 focuses solely on interpreting services and activities. This service must be provided in three stages:

1. planning the service and preparing the contract,
2. providing the service and
3. quality control

According to the standard, the preparation stage may include identifying the minimum specific characteristics and requirements for each type of interpreting service – simultaneous, consecutive, whispered and liaison. Simultaneous interpretation, where the interpreter renders the message in the target language while the source-language speaker continues to speak, requires technical equipment; in consecutive interpreting, the interpreter, who must possess specialist skills, speaks after the source-language speaker has finished speaking, without technical equipment; whispered interpreting does not use technical equipment either, and must be provided by personnel with interpreting competence.