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<h1 class="">On the Radar: ATA Survey, Basques’ EUR 5.8m Translation Tab, EU Says No to Dutch Only</h1>
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<span class="">by <a href="https://slator.com/author/marion-marking/">Marion Marking</a></span> on July 18, 2016 </div>
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<div class=""><img src="https://slator.com/assets/2016/07/radar-768x495.png" alt="On the Radar: ATA Survey, Basques’ EUR 5.8m Translation Tab, EU Says No to Dutch Only"></div>
<p>In the world of translation and interpretation, company owners
reported the highest gross income at USD 55,630, slightly ahead of
full-time private sector employees at USD 55,547 and full-time
independent contractors at USD 52,323, the latest <a href="http://www.atanet.org/chronicle-online/featured/summary-of-the-ata-translation-and-interpreting-services-survey/" target="_blank">survey</a> released by the American Translators Association (ATA) showed.</p>
<p>The ATA culled responses from translation and interpretation
professionals worldwide: two-thirds living in the US, 15% in Europe, 6%
in South America, 4% in Canada, and 6% in other locations.</p><div class=""><div class="" style="max-width:468px;max-height:60px"><span class="">Advertisement</span>
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<p>Part-time independent contractors (USD 17,746) and educators (USD
17,344) reported the lowest incomes. Some 50% of respondents reported a
higher gross income from translation and interpreting in 2014 compared
to 2013, almost a third reported no change, while 23% reported a
decrease.</p>
<p>Surveyed translators said three-quarters of their income came from
translating, while 15% came from editing or proofreading. Only 14%,
however, said they offer editing or proofreading services, and a mere 1%
of translators said they offer post-editing machine translation. They
reported a daily target output of 2,855 words and averaged 380,000
translated words in 2014.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, interpreters reported most of their income as coming from
the judiciary (27%), medicine/life sciences (22%), business (12%), and
conference (12%). Services they most commonly offered were consecutive
(96%), simultaneous (74%), sight (44%), and phone (42%).</p>
<h3>Basque Government Runs Up EUR 5.8m Translation Tab</h3>
<p>Between 2013 and 2015, the government of the Basque Autonomous
Community of Spain spent EUR 5.8m (USD 6.4m) to translate official
documents into Basque. The Basque Government’s translation spend was in
keeping with regulations on bilingualism, which state that text produced
by the Executive government must be translated into the two,
co-official languages of the region, Basque and Castilian (Spanish).</p>
<p>The Basque translation budget for 2016 is EUR 1.3m (USD 1.4m), which
includes the translation of state laws and legal documents. Most
official documents are in Castilian.</p>
<p>Despite the policy on bilingualism, only one in five government
employees use Basque in drafting official documents, a Language Policy
report dated May 2016 showed.</p>
<p>Documents submitted by the government further revealed the Basque
Institute of Public Administration (MVI in Basque) to have run up the
largest tab, which includes translation from other government
departments, but for which these departments must pay. The MVI has been
known to outsource translation to private companies or freelancers when
its own translators cannot keep up with demand.</p>
<h3>Invoicing: Going Dutch-Only Won’t Do With EU</h3>
<p>On June 21, 2016, the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU)
ruled a Flemish Decree contrary to EU law as it restricted the free
movement of goods within the union. The decree in question requires
invoices for cross-border transactions be only in Dutch if the issuer’s
business is located in a Dutch-speaking region.</p>
<p>As two lawyers with law firm Loyens & Loeff <a href="http://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=70380675-3190-41e9-87da-56f2ff2b1398" target="_blank">pointed out</a>,
a business based in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium selling goods to
an Italian customer will probably decide to issue an invoice in English
or Italian. But if the Italian customer defaults on payment and the
business decides to take the customer to court, the customer can simply
claim the invoice null because it violates the Flemish Decree.</p>
<p>Something similar happened in a case brought before a Belgian court,
which asked the CJEU to weigh in on the matter, triggering the ruling.
The CJEU ruled that encouraging the official language of the linguistic
region was not enough to justify the restriction of the free movement of
goods within the EU.</p>
<p>The CJEU recommended, therefore, that laws of a Member State not only
require the use the official state language in invoices for
cross-border transactions but also, additionally, allow a version of
those invoices to be in a language the parties involved in the
transaction understand. In other words, if you are based in a Flemish
region, draw up your invoices in English, Italian, French, or whatever
language your customer understands, in addition to Dutch.</p><p><a href="https://slator.com/industry-news/on-the-radar-ata-survey-basques-eur-5-8m-translation-tab-eu-says-no-to-dutch-only/">https://slator.com/industry-news/on-the-radar-ata-survey-basques-eur-5-8m-translation-tab-eu-says-no-to-dutch-only/</a><br></p><br clear="all"><br>-- <br><div class="gmail_signature" data-smartmail="gmail_signature">**************************************<br>N.b.: Listing on the lgpolicy-list is merely intended as a service to its members<br>and implies neither approval, confirmation nor agreement by the owner or sponsor of the list as to the veracity of a message's contents. Members who disagree with a message are encouraged to post a rebuttal, and to write directly to the original sender of any offensive message. A copy of this may be forwarded to this list as well. (H. Schiffman, Moderator)<br><br>For more information about the lgpolicy-list, go to <a href="https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/" target="_blank">https://groups.sas.upenn.edu/mailman/</a><br>listinfo/lgpolicy-list<br>*******************************************</div>
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