Georgie Scott wrote:
Jenny Forbes wrote:
I'd be interested to hear whether other female married or remarried translators have encountered this maiden name/married name problem and what they were able to do about it - or indeed from male translators, if interested.
I have more or less the same issue. My standard practice is to politely decline and direct potential clients to my Proz profile, where they are verified. The same agencies often ask for references too. Again, I direct them to the positive feedback on my profile here.
I completely understand why they ask for this. But I do think 10 minutes of due diligence will show that I'm probably not lying about having a degree in translation...
In any case, I'm not comfortable sending huge amounts of personal paperwork to strangers when I can avoid it and am not in the habit of asking service providers or surgeons/doctors for copies of their diplomas. Nonetheless, if I was unsatisfied with their work and suspected they had been lying about their qualifications, I may well try to challenge them on that legally... which is another reason I don't mind not sending a copy of my degree; I know it genuinely exists.
Nowadays, I'm finding that some agencies take no notice of the Professional/Verified Proz membership. I remind them that Proz has verified the qualifications itself in order to allow such a membership, and direct them to my membership details, but they still say they want to see the certificates themselves. Incredible... sometimes it's because the agency has ISOd itself up as it were so the rules have to be followed.
To top it all, I've just received an email from a long-standing client (client underwent organisational changes in 2018, if I remember rightly) asking me to fill in a survey and send copies of my CV and qualifications. I already did that last year, and I've worked for them for over 10 years. What's the purpose of having to keep resending them? I don't understand.