Liability on the job has become an interesting wrinkle in this nation of increasing cultural and lingual diversity. Professional translators have become the focus of the latest legal risk management ploy. A translator takes a job for $100, the client claims a translation error cost him $100,000 and sues. This is the nightmarish scenario that’s being used to sell liability insurance, (a.k.a. Errors & Omissions (E&O) insurance), to translators. In fact, according to the American Translators Association there is no record of a translator ever having been sued, let alone successfully sued, for translation errors in the U.S.

Despite this lack of precedent, some translation buyers now require that translators carry liability insurance. Some translators feel that this may be an attempt to shift the responsibility for translation quality from themselves to the translator.

The Association notes that there hasn’t been a single lawsuit for E&O against translators in the U.S., the country known for often frivolous lawsuits. They attribute this to at least the possibility that translation buyers don’t consider translators wealthy enough to be sued. This latter reason would of course disappear if E&O insurance became widespread.

According to some, translation is protected under the First Amendment right to free speech, but, as with other legal precepts on the question, has never been tested in court.

The question for translators then is this: is liability insurance an indispensable protection, an addition to the cost of doing business without any tangible benefit, or dangerous bait which by its very existence could encourage lawsuits against translators?