Translator Terms and Privacy Notice

1. Who we are

translationsuk.com is owned and operated by EKO 4 Translations UK Ltd, a company incorporated in England and Wales with registered number 16913593 and its registered office at 169 Blackmoorfoot Road, Crosland Moor, Huddersfield HD4 5AP.

EKO 4 Translations UK Ltd decides how your personal data is used: it is the controller. We apply the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018 to every translator, wherever you live. You can reach us about anything on this page at info@translationsuk.com.

2. Why we ask for your passport, diploma and signature

We translate official documents that contain sensitive personal data: birth, marriage and death certificates, immigration and court papers, medical and financial records. Our customers trust us with them, so we must know who handles them. Before we give anyone work, we confirm their identity and their qualifications.

Many of our translations are also notarised, and some are then legalised with an apostille by the Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office. For a notarised translation, the translator signs a declaration of accuracy before a notary public in a short video meeting, and the notary must establish the identity of everyone whose signature they witness, over video as in person (the Faculty Office Code of Practice for notaries).

• Your passport confirms who you are, and that the person who signs a declaration of accuracy or meets the notary is the translator we engaged.
• Your diploma confirms your qualification as a translator.
• Your signature is kept as your sample signature, and appears on the documents you sign for a job, such as a notarised declaration of accuracy.

We never sell your data. We do not use your passport, diploma or signature for marketing, or for anything not described on this page.

3. What we collect

• Application details – your name, email address, phone number, city and country, languages, rates, experience, education and availability, and the PayPal address (or bank details) we pay you at.
• Identity and qualification documents – a scan of your passport and the details read from it (name, passport number, nationality, date of birth, expiry date and issuing country), and your diploma.
• Your signature – drawn on our application form, and again each time you confirm a job.
• For notarised jobs – the phone number where the notary can reach you.
• Work records – the jobs we offer you and you accept, pages, deadlines and payments, our notes on your work, and the date and version of these terms you accepted.

4. Our lawful basis

• Checking your identity and qualifications – our legitimate interests in protecting our customers’ confidential documents and preventing fraud and impersonation (UK GDPR, Article 6(1)(f)). You may object to this: see section 10.
• Considering your application, offering and paying jobs, and arranging notarisations – the steps you ask us to take before working with us, and our agreement with you (Article 6(1)(b)).
• Tax and accounting records, and court orders or other legal demands – our legal obligations (Article 6(1)(c)).

Giving us your passport and diploma is a condition of working with us: without them we cannot accept your application or give you jobs.

5. Who sees your data

• Our staff who manage translators and orders.
• For a notarised job you accept, the notary public and any identity-check service the notary uses, to verify your identity in the video meeting.
• Google, which runs the automated passport check for us as our processor (section 6).
• PayPal or your bank, to pay you.
• Our customer, who sees your name and signature only on the documents issued for their order.
• Courts, police, HMRC and other authorities, as described in section 14.

We do not share your data with anyone else.

6. The automated passport check

When you upload a passport, an automated tool (Google’s Gemini API, a paid service Google runs as our processor) reads its machine-readable zone and expiry date to check that it is a valid, current passport. If the check fails, we ask you to upload a current passport. You can ask a member of our team to review the document instead, explain your situation and contest the result: email info@translationsuk.com.

7. Transfers out of the UK

We work with translators and customers in many countries, so your data is used outside the UK, including in the United States, where Google runs the passport check. We protect these transfers as UK law requires. Google is certified under the UK–US data bridge and processes your data under its data processing terms. Other transfers are made because they are needed for a job you have accepted, or under the UK International Data Transfer Agreement.

8. Keeping your data safe

We keep your documents on our own systems, use them only for the purposes on this page, let only the people listed in section 5 use them, and never publish them. No system connected to the internet is completely secure: if a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the Information Commission as the law requires.

9. How long we keep it

• Applications not completed (documents uploaded but the form never sent) – 30 days.
• Applicants we do not work with – 12 months after the application.
• Translators who work with us – while you work with us, and for 6 years after your last job, the period for contract, tax and legal claims.
• Passports – when your passport expires, we delete the copy and ask you for a current one.

10. Your rights and complaints

You may ask us to give you a copy of your data, correct it, delete it, limit how we use it, or send it to you in a portable format, and you may object to our identity and qualification checks. Email info@translationsuk.com. We reply within one month, or tell you within that month if a complex request needs up to two more.

If you are unhappy with how we use your data, email info@translationsuk.com with “Data complaint” in the subject. We acknowledge every complaint within 30 days, look into it, keep you informed and tell you the outcome. You can also complain to the UK regulator, the Information Commission (known as the ICO), at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113, or to the data protection authority where you live.

11. Confidentiality of customer documents

The documents our customers send are confidential, and you handle them on our behalf. You must:

• use them only for the job we gave you, and follow our instructions;
• keep them confidential and secure, and not show or send them to anyone, including other translators, without our written consent;
• not pass any part of a job to someone else without our written consent;
• tell us at once if a document is lost, sent to the wrong person or seen by someone who should not see it;
• delete every copy, including downloads, emails and drafts, within 30 days of delivering the job.

These duties continue after you stop working with us.

12. Accuracy and your responsibility

You must translate accurately and completely, and you carry full legal responsibility for the accuracy of your translations. Any declaration you sign for a job, such as a declaration of accuracy before a notary, must be true. If an error or omission in your translation, or a breach of these terms, causes a loss to us or to our customer, you will repay us for that loss.

13. Copyright in your translations

For each job you translate or proofread for us:

• as soon as it is created, you assign (transfer) to us, with full title guarantee, all copyright and related rights in your translation, or in your proofreading changes, worldwide and for the full term of those rights, so that we can assign them to our customer once the customer has paid us;
• in return, we pay you the fee agreed for the job;
• you waive your moral rights in it, including the right to be identified as its author, except where your name appears on a document you sign.

This is an assignment of copyright made in writing and signed by you electronically, when you sign our application form or confirm a job.

14. Incidents and requests from authorities

If there is an incident involving a job you worked on – for example a complaint, a suspected fraud, a court case or a police investigation – we will give your personal data to the courts, police, HMRC or other authorities when the law requires it, or when they make a lawful request and the data is needed to prevent or detect crime or for their official functions. We keep a record of each disclosure.

15. Governing law and courts

This Agreement and any dispute or claim arising out of or in connection with it or its subject matter or formation (including non-contractual disputes or claims) shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of England and Wales, and the parties irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of England and Wales.

This does not affect your right to complain to a data protection regulator, or any rights that the law of the country where you live gives you and that a contract cannot take away.

16. Accepting and updating these terms

You accept these terms by ticking the box and signing our application form, and again each time you confirm a job; we record the date and the version you accepted. We may update these terms: changes apply to jobs you confirm after we publish them, and the date at the top of this page shows the current version.

Contacting us

Questions about this page should go to info@translationsuk.com, or by post to: