Etes-vous prêt pour le SEPA ?

Vous êtes au courant ? A partir du 1er février 2014 le numéro RIB disparaitra et de nouvelles coordonnées bancaires vont devenir obligatoires pour tous les virements et prélèvements réalisés dans la zone euro. Les comptes en banque seront numérotés différemment, à l’identique dans toute l’Union Européenne. En effet, après la monnaie unique il s’agit d’une nouvelle étape pour l’Europe qui entend achever sont “espace unique de paiements en euros” ou Single Euro Payments Area (SEPA). Tous les pays de l’Union européenne, même ceux n’ayant pas l’euro comme monnaie, plus Monaco, la Suisse, le Lichtenstein, la Norvège et l’Islande sont membres du SEPA.

Single Euro Payments Area avec ses 32 membres.

Donc à partir de février toutes les opérations interbancaires devront être SEPA-compatibles. Une nouvelle numérotation remplacera celle des Relevés d’Identité Bancaires (RIB) qui étaient jusqu’ici la norme pour les virements en France. Le RIB qu’on connait est généralement composé d’un code établissement, d’un code guichet, d’un numéro de compte et d’une clé RIB. Par contre le code IBAN s’articule autour d’un code pays (FR pour la France), de plusieurs séries de 4 chiffres, suivi d’un code BIC (en 11 caractères) qui désigne l’établissement. Cette codification sera la même pour tous les comptes domiciliés au sein de l’Union européenne.

En France les identifiants BIC et IBAN figurent sur les imprimés des RIB depuis 2001. Les virements aux normes SEPA sont possibles depuis 2008 et les prélèvements depuis 2010. La différence c’est qu’elles seront désormais obligatoires. Actuellement en France 57,9% des virements sont déjà effectués selon les normes SEPA, mais seulement 4,2% des prélèvements [chiffres mis à jour novembre 2013].

Nous voila prévenus – au-dela du 1er février les banques n’accepteront plus les anciennes coordonnées bancaires. Ce qui risque d’occasionner des rejets d’opération, donc des retards de paiement et des couts supplémentaires. Une entreprise qui n’aurait pas basculé au 14 février 2014 se retrouverait de fait en situation de cessation de paiement. Les enjeux sont énormes car en France les banques traitent chaque année 2,9 milliards opérations de virements et 3,4 milliards de prélèvements, mais il faudrait travailler le passage au SEPA car le changement ne va se faire tout seul.

Orange = IBAN uniquement. Bleu = SEPA et IBAN

Quels sont les enjeux pour nous, traducteurs ? Si vous avez des clients qui vous paient par virement bancaire assurez-vous qu’ils ont tous l’IBAN de votre compte bancaire afin d’éviter des retards de paiement inutiles.  Notez que l’une des nouveautés pour les destinataires de prélèvements est un délai de contestation sans justification de 8 semaines après la date de débit. Et rapprochez-vous de votre banque pour tous vos virements et prélèvements.

Pour en savoir davantage:

• Urgence SEPA
• SEPA, l’échéance 2014 approche : êtes-vous prêts ? (article dans Les Echos)
• Comité national SEPA France
• Ministère de l’économie et des finances
• Union Européenne 
• Wikipedia

The Translator Diaries

The Translator Diaries series is a weekly series of interviews conducted by colleague Lloyd Bingham with current freelance translators, looking at how and why they went into the industry. As Lloyd says:

“In this set of interviews, we will learn what makes them so passionate about translation, how they established themselves, and what obstacles they have overcome to succeed as a translator”.

Previous interviewees have been German to English translator Sarah Pybus, as well as French and German to English translators Clare Goodman and Megan Onions. I was honoured to be Lloyd’s fourth interviewee, and you can read the interview here.

Next week will see Lloyd interviewing French and Spanish to English translator Lydia Smith.

Tweaking Productivity

Over at Translation Times, Judy Jenner recently mentioned one of her bad habits as being Shiny Object Syndrome, i.e. getting distracted by something else when you should be concentrating on the task in hand. In my case the shiny objects are definitely e-mail and Vienna (my RSS feed), and to a lesser extent Twitter and Facebook. One of the reasons I get so distracted by e-mail and RSS is that both have a bright red ‘unread count’ badge which appears in the Dock on my iMac. Since I upgraded to Mountain Lion there are also notifications that appear on the opposite side of computer screen. Help! When I’m working I find it very difficult to avoid the red badge and am generally not happy unless nothing is showing there – but constantly interrupting myself like this is not conducive to concentrating on my real, paid work.

So this week rather than just submitting I finally got round to doing something about it. On my computer I’d configured Mail to check for new e-mail every 15 minutes and Vienna for new RSS feeds every hour, and I haven’t changed that. But in the Preferences of the current version of Mail (6.2), surprisingly, it’s no longer possible to hide the unread count. After a bit of snooping around on the internet I found the solution – you need to go to System Preferences, where you can turn off the notification alerts, as well as uncheck the Badge app icon. However I did add an application called Mail Unread Menu which allows you to have a tiny icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen with the number of unread e-mails – much less distracting. For Vienna it’s easier, as in its Preferences you just need to select ‘Do nothing’ under ‘When new unread articles are retrieved’ (a discreet icon remains in the menu bar). I could of course just hide the Dock which shows all the software icons, but I prefer when it’s visible.

The Notification center for Mail in System Preferences

Having done this I definitely found it easier to concentrate on the work in hand, as I had less distractions. And just a few clicks are needed when I need or want to change things back again.

What adjustments have you made to help your productivity? Please share in the comments.

Parallel novels

I recently finished reading Geraldine Brooks‘ March, which I think along with Jean Rhys‘ Wide Sargasso Sea, is only the second parallel novel I’ve read. What’s a parallel novel? According to Wikipedia:

 “Parallel novels are written within, or derived from, the framework of another work of fiction by another author. This does not include franchised book series, which are typically works licensed by the publisher of the original work to use its settings and characters … . Works … usually have the same setting and time period, and many of the same characters, but are told from a different perspective”.

So for example in March, Geraldine Brooks took the character of the (absent) father from Little Women – who had gone off to fight in the American Civil War – and wrote an original story recounting his experiences. It’s a powerful book that I enjoyed reading which explores themes such as injustice, a woman’s place, miscommunication, abolitionism, racial bigotry, slavery, and obligations. I last read Little Women when I was, well, little, and couldn’t remember very much about the story but that wasn’t a hindrance in understanding or following the story in March. I’m not surprised it won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, although it has been compared to ‘respectable’ ‘fan fiction‘ (see here).

First edition cover of ‘March’

I read Jean Rhys’ most successful novel, Wide Sargasso Sea, a few years ago, and enjoyed it too, although maybe not quite so much as March. Published in 1966 it acts as a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre, written in 1847. It tells the story of Antoinette Cosway (known as Bertha Mason in Jane Eyre) from the time of her youth in the Caribbean to her unhappy marriage with Mr Rochester and relocation to England. Rhys, who was born in Dominica, re-imagined Brontë’s ‘madwoman in the attic’, and deals largely with the theme of racial inequality. She used several narrative voices: Antoinette, Rochester and Grace Poole (the caretaker). In 2005 WSS was named by Time as one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923, and is rated N° 94 on the list of Modern Library’s 100 Best Novels.

First edition cover of ‘Wide Sargasso Sea’

Have you read any parallel novels? I’ve been unable to find any in French – if you are aware of any do let me know in the comments. What about in other languages?

Some other examples of parallel novels:

• The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (based on Homer’s Odyssey)
• Jack Maggs by Peter Carey (based on Dickens’ Great Expectations)
• Foe by JM Coetzee (based on Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe)
• Eaters of the Dead by Michael Crichton (based on Beowulf)
• The Hours by Michael Cunningham (based on Virginia Woolf’s Mrs Dalloway)
• Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead by Tom Stoppard (based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet)
• Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike (based on Shakespeare’s Hamlet)

Further reading:

• List of fictional works using settings created by other artists (Wikipedia)
• List of/article about parallel novels (West Milford Township Library, New Jersey, USA)