This is a story about an opportunity I had to reveal the secrets of the Iranian bomb.
Being a professional translator, you get to read highly confidential materials of businesses, organizations and governments around the world.
Most of them are highly sensitive financial, technological or marketing data for which we, as translators, are obliged to provide an accurate translation and forget about its content once completed.
More than that, the people at Tomedes, smart human translations ( http://www.tomedes.com ) where I currently work, have been making sure no computer files or printed materials are left once the translation is completed.
I have signed a non disclosure agreement and I have never had any doubts about the confidentiality of the materials I work with until one day a few years back.
It was a standard working day. I was flooded with translation requests and worked around the clock to provide accurate translations for each and every one of them.
One was a German to English 3,000 words translation. It was detailed description of a big Asian country developing its own nuclear bomb and deceiving the world. I remember it was written quite poorly but included some non trivial scientific terms.
For some reason I could not manage to forget this translation. I’ve even remembered the name of the German author.
About a month ago I’ve decided to make a move. After notifying the translation I’ve worked for at that time, I’ve opened my Google Chrome browser and typed the name of the author in the address bar. After a few minutes going over the Google results page, I had found the answer.
Apparently the writer was not an Iranian nuclear scientist but a German science student who has an habit of writing short stories and has a dream of publishing them worldwide. Well, in a sense his dream came true, wasn’t it?
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