Professional secrecy and translation tools: stored in Switzerland, but processed where?

Storing is not processing

This is the distinction that most sales documentation leaves vague, and it is the one that decides everything.

A platform can perfectly well host your documents on Swiss servers and send each segment to an engine hosted elsewhere for translation. Both statements are true at the same time, and only the second matters for a case covered by professional secrecy. Transient processing is still processing: the text was transmitted, read, computed and sent back, outside your jurisdiction.

This is why the wording to demand from a provider is never ‘your data is in Switzerland’, but a sentence that separates the two: storage on servers in Switzerland in all cases; processing in Switzerland in one configuration, abroad in another. If the person you are dealing with cannot answer the two separately, they cannot answer.

What happens when you choose an engine hosted abroad

Professional translation platforms are now multi-engine: they orchestrate several models, some of them operated by third parties outside Switzerland. This is a good thing, because engines have different strengths. It is also a point to watch, because the place of processing changes with the engine selected, at every upload.

Three things then happen, and you should keep them in mind.

• The text leaves the country. It is transmitted to an operator subject to another legal system, in a country whose authorities may have powers of access different from those in your own jurisdiction.
• The question of reuse arises. An engine may retain submitted content, use it to improve its models, or log it. The terms vary with the contract, the offer and the contracting entity: this is a question to ask in writing, for each engine, not an assumption to make.
• The chain of subcontractors grows longer. Between you and the engine, there may be an integrator, a hosting provider, an infrastructure supplier. Each additional link is one more access point to document.

Conversely, an engine operated in the same country as the storage removes this break. That is the logic of a platform's strictest mode: in Corrext, the Highly sensitive content option requires storage and processing exclusively in Switzerland for German, French, Italian and English. According to the definition shown in the application, the translated content is not reused in a translation memory for future projects.

Pseudonymisation: what it protects, and what it does not

Pseudonymising a document before sending it to an engine abroad means removing or replacing whatever identifies the people and the matter: names of the parties, companies, counsel, addresses, file references, and sometimes the very subject of the dispute.

It is a serious precaution. It has two limits that must be stated clearly.

• It is not anonymisation. The link to the person still exists on your side, and the text is still case content. The risk of disclosure is reduced, not removed.
• Context re-identifies. An unusual transaction, an uncommon clause, a combination of dates, courts and sectors can be enough to recognise a known case, even without a single proper name. The more prominent the matter, the less pseudonymisation protects.

The practical cost also counts: pseudonymising forty documents properly by hand takes time, and partial pseudonymisation gives a false sense of security that is worse than none at all, because it lowers vigilance. For truly sensitive matters, the right answer is not better redaction: it is not leaving the country.

Why a warning in the tool beats a policy document

Most organisations have a policy on the use of digital tools. It is signed on arrival, filed on an intranet, and forgotten on the day someone has to understand forty documents in German before the next day's hearing. This is not a problem of discipline: it is a problem of timing.

A rule is only applied if it appears at the moment of decision, to the person making it. This is exactly what a contextual warning does. In Corrext, selecting an engine hosted abroad brings up the following notice, exactly as it appears in the application:

Three features of this mechanism are worth noting, whatever the tool.

• The notice is triggered by an action, not by a calendar. It only appears when the risk arises, which keeps its value as a warning.
• It states the organisation's policy, not the provider's. The law firm decides what is prohibited; the tool simply reminds users of it where it is useful.
• It does not block. Users remain responsible and can go ahead knowingly. A tool that prohibits everything ends up bypassed by consumer services, which warn of nothing.

This last point matters most for a legal department. The main risk is not that someone chooses a foreign engine in a governed tool. It is that they paste a paragraph into a free online service because the approved tool said no. A workable policy reduces risk more than a perfect one.

Twelve questions to ask a provider

Location

1. Where are the storage servers, in which country, and who operates them?
2. For each engine offered, where does processing take place?
3. Is there a configuration in which processing never leaves the country, and how does the user activate it?
4. Which law governs the contract, and which courts have jurisdiction?

Parties involved

5. Which subcontractors are involved in the chain, and which of them access the content?
6. Who at the provider can technically read a document, and is such access logged?
7. Are the human reviewers employees or freelancers, and what confidentiality undertaking binds them?
8. Is notification provided for if an authority requests access, to the extent the applicable law allows?

Data and evidence

9. What data is reused, for what purpose, and can this be switched off per project?
10. How long is content kept, and by what procedure is it deleted?
11. Which certification is held, since when, and with what exact scope? Ask for the certificate, not the logo.
12. Is a data processing agreement offered, and does it provide for a realistic audit right?

What you can decide this week

• Sort your documents into three baskets: what any engine may translate, what requires processing in Switzerland, what never leaves the firm. Most organisations have never done this exercise, and it takes one meeting.
• Provide a default approved tool. Until there is one, the default behaviour is the nearest online service.
• Write the rule as a choice, not a prohibition: in this case, this mode; in that case, that mode. A rule that begins with ‘it is prohibited to’ does not say what to do.
• Once a year, check the answers to the questions above: engines, subcontractors and terms change faster than contracts.

Finally, a word on the legal texts. Data protection falls under the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP), and under the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) when data subjects in the European Union are concerned. Lawyers' professional secrecy falls under federal criminal law and the rules of the profession. These frameworks do not replace one another, and how they apply to a given tool depends on the circumstances. This article describes a prudent practice; it does not replace the advice of your compliance officer or your professional body.