Safety for Danish translators

The Danish Translators Association (Dansk Oversætterforbund, DOF) is the Danish Authors Society’s group aimed at translation professionals. The organisation, based in Copenhagen, has nearly 200 members, but its ambition takes it to admit it expects an increase in the numbers, thanks to a “rapidly changing environment” affecting the book market.

As members, the Danish translation association admits all literary translators. As part of the DOF family, they benefit from all the Danish Authors Society’s many member resources, “on equal footing with the other professionals”.

DOF works intensively on a daily basis in order to create a better and more orderly structure for translators and translation agencies. Members of the translators association from Denmark are free to seek advice on numerous issues, like contracting, with the organisation. It is a priority of the association to keep up-to-date in contracting issues, as well as in all subjects concerning the profession. DOF studies the general living conditions of its members within the industry, and is committed to improving the lives of all professionals who have decided to trust them with their professional representation. According to the Danish translators association, this commitment will strengthen both the individual’s and the group’s bargaining position.

As a member of DOF, you can always feel safe that the association will provide you with advice and guidance, whenever trouble comes around. You also have the opportunity to meet colleagues in the profession and share your thoughts, doubts, views and experience with them. This way, a certain loneliness associated with the profession of translators can be overcome. As a group, professionals are certainly stronger and hopefully more self-confident.

The Danish translation association organises regular member meetings, courses, workshops and seminars, as well as parties. It also strives to hold a monthly parent board meeting, alternating between Copenhagen and Aarhus as hosts.

DOF is committed to the future. It wishes to invest further in strengthening cooperation between all Nordic countries, both at political and economic levels.

Crediting and visibility are also big priorities for the Copenhagen-based translators association. DOF works hard to ensure that translators are credited and paid in accordance with applicable regulations, taking into account the reproduction of excerpts of translated works. Furthermore, DOF commits to increasing public awareness of the work of translators and its importance to the Danish language and national literature. One great example of the effort put by the organisation in showing how good the work done by its members can be is the Danish Translators Association Honorary Award (DKK 60,000). It is awarded every year, in February.

The organisation has established a group forum accessible to all members. To join the talking, you should log in (using the login application on DOF’s website) and choose Forum.

DOF’s mother

As mentioned above, the Danish Translators Association is part of a larger organisation called Danish Authors’ Society. DOF’s mother was founded in 1894 and it has, nowadays, approximately 1300 members, between authors, illustrators and, of course, translators.

The main aim of this society is to improve conditions for all creative artists in general, with a special interest in members of the organisation.

The Danish Authors’ Society provides its members with “a wide range of seminars, legal advice, information on bursaries and grants”, amongst many other things.

The society is organised in five groups of professionals: fiction, poetry, non-fiction, children’s and youth literature and DOF, the translation association. It is also home to several interest groups such as illustration, haiku, women writers and seniors’ activities.

Keep in mind that Danish, a North Germanic language, is spoken by around six million people, mostly in the kingdom of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, and 25,000 Danes in Norway where it holds minority language status.

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