As a translator, you need to provide accurate translations for clients. It’s not an easy task – language has so many shades of meaning, and mistakes can easily be made. If mistakes in your work cause your client to suffer losses, they can sue you for compensation. It’s therefore critical that translators adequately protect themselves from such legal risks.
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Consultants should have the following covers to adequately protect themselves:
Coverage | Explanation | Importance for translators |
Protects you from lawsuits related to translation work | Critical | |
Protects your office against property damage. Covers your equipment, renovations, and other contents. | Critical only if you rent an office | |
Protects you against liability to third-parties for property damage or injuries. E.g. clients slipping & falling in your office due to you negligently leaving the floor wet. | Very good to have | |
Protects your employees if they suffer work-related injuries/sickness. | Legally required for all workers who earn <$2,600/month, and for all manual workers  | |
Compensates you for lost business income if you can’t operate your translation business due to covered reasons, e.g. fire at your office. | Very good to have | |
Protects you if you suffer a cyber attack. Covers IT restoration costs, data breach liability, PDPA liability, and more. | Good to have |
Professional Indemnity Insurance: The most important coverage that translators need is Professional Indemnity Insurance. Translators are exposed to significant liability from their work. It’s easy to make mistakes while translating between different languages. Clients can sue you if you make errors while translating documents, and these errors cause them to suffer losses. Professional Indemnity Insurance would pay for lawyer’s fees and court damages or settlement costs, which can be very expensive to bear without insurance.
Cyber Insurance: This is a another very useful coverage for translators. Translators often have access to private and sensitive documents. Examples include IPO prospectuses, company memorandums, books, magazines, and all other kinds of confidential data. Cyber Insurance is thus critical to protect you from liability if you get hit by a cyber breach, and this data gets leaked. It also covers you in case you lose all your translated documents, and have to pay someone to recover the data for you.Â
Commercial Property Insurance: If you have an office space, you should protect it against major risks like fire and water damage. A Commercial Property policy can protect your computers, electronic equipment, files, and other contents from physical damage.Â
Public Liability Insurance: If you travel to meet clients, or have clients visiting you in your office, then Public Liability Insurance is a good idea. This covers you in case you accidentally injure someone else, or damage someone else’s property. Common examples include clients slipping and falling in your office – say, due to a puddle that you negligently left on the floor after mopping it. Public Liability Insurance pays for lawyer’s fees and settlement/damage costs for such cases.
Work Injury Compensation Insurance (WICA Insurance):Â Work Injury Compensation Insurance coversyour employees if they suffer work-related injuries and illnesses, including Covid-19 infections. By law, all employers must have Work Injury Compensation insurance for all employees who earn $2,600/month or less, and for all manual workers.
Business Interruption Insurance: This compensates you for lost business income if you can’t operate your translation business, due to covered risks. For instance, if your office suffers a fire, you will suffer two types of losses: i) loss of computers, renovations, and other office contents, and ii) lost business income while the office is out of commission.
Client sues you for errors made in translating documents:
You’re working on translating a large book for a client. The book gets published to much fanfare. Unfortunately, soon after publication, numerous media sites and book critics pick up multiple translation errors in the book. Colloquialisms and other phrases had suffered from butchered translations. Your client suffers large financial losses as a result. They sue you, alleging negligence in your translation work, and demand you compensate them for these losses. Since you carry Professional Indemnity Insurance, your insurer steps in to defend you. Your lawyer’s fees and settlement costs eventually add up to $600,000. The insurance company pays these costs.
Cyber attack causes you to lose translated documents, and exposes client’s confidential documents:
A cyber attack on your business exposes all your confidential documents that you’ve been translating. Pre-published books, pre-published IPO prospectuses, and all kinds of sensitive data are leaked. Your clients file a lawsuit against you, claiming breach of confidentiality and negligence in safeguarding their data. This breach also deletes all the translated documents you’ve been working on.Â
Cyber Insurance would pay to defend you against your client’s lawsuits. Cyber Insurance would also pay for IT experts to help recover the translated documents that were lost.Â
Employee injured while working:One of your employees was on his way to meet a client. While crossing the road, a car accidentally hits your employee. Your employee ends up with some broken bones, and a concussion. His medical treatment costs end up being $7,000. Since this was a work-related incident, you must compensate your employee for his medical bills. Since you carry WICA Insurance, your insurer will cover your worker’s medical costs.
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Coverage | Coverage amount (example) | Premium |
$100,000 | From $42/month | |
$100,000 | From $19/month, for a comprehensive Translators Insurance Package deal  | |
$500,000 | ||
$10 million common law annual limit  $45,000 medical expenses cover per worker | ||
$10,000 | ||
$250,000 | From $49/month |