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NDAs - can you just sign them?
Thread poster: Inez Ulrich
Korana Lasić
Korana Lasić  Identity Verified
Member
Serbian to English
+ ...
The things we're up against! Feb 26, 2021

Anton Konashenok wrote:

Both a vendor agreement and an NDA can tell you what kind of client an agency is. When the agency is imposing upon you a huge, menacingly worded agreement obviously skewed in their favour, you know you are unlikely to get any meaningful work from them even if you sign it. The very best clients have agreements as small as one page. Conversely, sometimes you see a heap of legal mumbo-jumbo that may not even be enforceable or relevant in the given jurisdiction. One European agency recently sent me an NDA obviously written in the US. When I confronted them on that, they had the audacity to claim it was written by a licensed European lawyer. I had to point out that "federal and state legislation", "injunctive relief" and "remedies in equity" don't belong in the continental European law. Apart from that, they stipulated a confidentiality period of twenty years, and in the vendor agreement they explicitly refused to pay invoices submitted more than six months after the job delivery.


Some of these agencies are quite something, aren't they? In all the wrong ways.


 
Sarah Maidstone
Sarah Maidstone  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 10:43
Member (2020)
German to English
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Currently wading through a 34-pager... Mar 9, 2021

... for an agency that I'd really like to work with. The NDA part is fair enough, but there are other parts of the contract that concern me. It's obviously aimed at lots of types of suppliers, not just translators, but one part I'm not sure about is data protection and privacy. Am I right in thinking that, as long as I'm not processing any personal data, then it doesn't apply anyway, or do I need to flag up this section (as well as the others that I'm not at all comfortable with)?

 
Tom in London
Tom in London
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:43
Member (2008)
Italian to English
They never come across Mar 9, 2021

In many years of being a translator, I can't recall even one of the agencies for whom I have signed an NDA ever actually giving me any work.

 
Inez Ulrich
Inez Ulrich  Identity Verified
Germany
Local time: 10:43
Member (2016)
English to German
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
... Mar 9, 2021

not my experience at all - most of the agencies I signed NDAs for I got work from, also regular work.
The NDA was short and sweet and I have already got the frist two tasks from them. So far it all looks good to me.


 
Daryo
Daryo
United Kingdom
Local time: 09:43
Serbian to English
+ ...
That kind of stupid clauses Mar 12, 2021

Marina Taffetani wrote:

I think you (we) should always read NDAs carefully. I quoted on a translation project a few weeks ago. I'd never worked with that agency before, but they had great ratings on the Blue Board and were willing to accept my rates. They obviously asked me to sign an NDA, and... luckily I read it very carefully. There was a clause stating that I agreed to inspections at my workplace from a third party representative. Wait, what?! I won't open my door to any representative, third party or otherwise. My workplace is in my house, and although my office is in a separate room, I definitely don't want anyone entering my house and inspecting my computer or premises. I asked them to delete that clause. I never heard of them again.


That kind of stupid clauses is there so that agencies can pretend that they are "compliant" with some standards they are going to boast about, like "ISO certified" whatever on their letterhead - standards that make sense only for translation companies that are really employing in-house translators. They are supposed to be "in control the production process", and when there are subcontractors operating a factory or a workshop, site visits/audits from major clients are a perfectly normal practice. I have done myself that kind of "site visits" as interpreter and also as the one doing the visits.

What is not normal is when some plain stupid / lazy / out of touch lawyers start just blindly copying the same requirements for home-based translators, where it makes no sense.


 
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NDAs - can you just sign them?







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