A contract in two columns: how a group from Turkey signed what they had read in Turkish

01 / The request

The end of the season in Side and fourteen vacancies near Vinnytsia

On the first of November the hotel in Side where Serkan Yağcı had spent nine seasons in the laundry closed for the winter. Serkan handed in his pass, took his work boots out of the locker and went home to Manavgat, to his wife and two sons. The elder had just started university in Konya, and seasonal earnings would no longer last until spring. A week later, at the office of our licensed partner on Manavgat's main street, Serkan was shown a vacancy he had never considered: an industrial laundry in Ukraine, a one-year contract, accommodation provided by the employer.

The laundry itself had come to WORKIN a month earlier. It washes linen for hotels and private clinics in Vinnytsia and the surrounding region, had signed contracts with two more hotels and had two months to take on the new volume. The HR director brought a clear task to the first meeting: eight washing machine operators and six ironing line operators, all with experience in an industrial laundry, not a dry cleaner or a household service. She did not name a country and asked us where such people could come from in time.

There was nothing unusual about the task until we worked out who actually has that experience. The answer led us to a country where candidates speak neither Ukrainian nor Russian. That meant every document a person reads or signs had to be prepared so that they genuinely understood it: from the passport translation for the permit to the employment contract they would sign on their first working day.

Who is needed

8 washing machine operators and 6 ironing line operators

Experience

An industrial or large hotel laundry

Deadline

Two months until the new volume starts

Our condition

People sign only a text they have read in their own language

02 / Choosing the country

Why we looked for industrial laundry experience on the Antalya coast

We compared the countries we recruit from against what mattered for this particular task. First, experience: an operator who has spent years handling large batches of hotel linen settles into a new workplace in a few days, while someone without it would need long training. Second, time: only a visa-free route fits into two months, and it takes four to seven weeks. Third, our partners' reserve, so that fourteen places came with back-up.

Our partners in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan had plenty of Russian-speaking candidates, but only a handful with industrial laundry experience. In Turkey the picture is the reverse. The Antalya coast has hundreds of hotels, and every large one either runs its own laundry or sends its linen to industrial laundries nearby. The season ends in the autumn, and experienced operators look for a full year's work. Turkish citizens enter Ukraine without a visa, and our partner in Manavgat had put groups together for us before.

This choice had one drawback, and we told the HR director straight away: Turkish candidates speak neither Ukrainian nor Russian, and only a few can manage in English. So along with the country we proposed a way of handling the documents. Everything a person reads and signs before departure is in Turkish. Every name is spelt the same way in every document. The employment contract is in two columns. Emre, our Worker Relations Manager for Turkey, speaks with the candidates in Turkish. The laundry agreed and signed our recruitment contract.

1. 01

   Experience

   Hotel and industrial laundries in Antalya, people with several seasons behind them.

2. 02

   Time

   Visa-free route of four to seven weeks, fits into two months.

3. 03

   Reserve

   A partner in Manavgat; after the season there are more candidates than places.

4. 04

   Language

   No Ukrainian or Russian: documents in Turkish and a two-column contract.

03 / Selection

Interviews in Turkish in Manavgat, with a passport photo as the first document

The partner collected applications from forty-two candidates in Manavgat, Side, Alanya and Antalya. Emre interviewed them in Turkish over video from the partner's office, and the laundry's operations director joined the second part of the conversation with everyone who passed the first. Emre interpreted both ways word for word, without paraphrasing: the director needed to hear the candidate's answer, not our opinion of it.

The questions were not about stock phrases from a CV but about what the person had done themselves: which laundry, how many seasons, what kind of linen, which section. Hatice Kılıç, 38, had spent eleven years at an industrial laundry near Antalya that serves hotels, and answered in such detail that the director stopped asking questions within five minutes. Serkan talked about his nine seasons at the hotel in Side and why, this time, he wanted work for a year rather than until April.

Fourteen people were approved, with two in reserve. Three could make themselves understood in English, among them Oğuz Işık from Alanya, 29, with five seasons on an ironing line. Straight after the interview each of them sent the partner a photo of the passport data page. For us, that photo was where the paperwork began: it was the basis for the name register from which everything else was then printed.

04 / Names

Ş, ğ and ı: three letters a translator can read in different ways

A Turkish passport records a name twice. In the upper part of the page it is printed with Turkish letters: YAĞCI, KILIÇ, IŞIK. In the machine-readable line at the bottom the same surnames appear with no marks at all: YAGCI, KILIC, ISIK. To a translator who does not know Turkish these are almost two different words. And the employment law requires copies of the passport pages to be filed with a certified translation into Ukrainian, where the name must be the name of that exact person.

Nataliia, Head of Documents at WORKIN, knows exactly where the trap lies. The Turkish c sounds like the j in jam and ç like the ch in church, yet in the machine-readable line both become a plain Latin C. The dotless ı sounds different from the dotted i, and ğ is barely heard, it only lengthens the vowel. A translator working from the machine-readable line or from English habits will write Ягці (Yahtsi) instead of Ягджи (Yahdzhy) in the Ukrainian translation, and Кіліс (Kilis) instead of Килич (Kylych). Two different translators can render one surname in two different ways, and both versions will look convincing.

So before the first translation, Emre and Nataliia built a name register. For each of the fourteen it has three lines: the name in Turkish letters, as in the upper part of the passport; in plain Latin, as in the machine-readable line; and in Ukrainian, as it would appear in the translation, the permit application and the contract. For every document the register states which of the three spellings it uses: Turkish letters in the Turkish column of the contract, the information sheet and the worker's guide; plain Latin on tickets and in systems that do not accept Turkish letters; Ukrainian in the translations, the application and the Ukrainian column of the contract. Every candidate heard from Emre how their name would sound in Ukrainian and approved that version. Hatice laughed: in Ukrainian her name sounds the way her family says it, while foreign hotel guests had spent years reading Hatis on her badge.

05 / Translations for the permit

Fourteen passport translations checked before the notary

The employment law sets two requirements for documents in a foreign language: they are translated into Ukrainian, and the translator's signature is certified by a notary. The application for a work permit consists of the employer's application, copies of the passport pages with a translation, a colour photo, a draft employment contract certified by the employer and proof of payment. Nataliia gathered the laundry's documents using the company checklist, while the passport translations became the most painstaking part of the job.

We work with a translator who translates directly from Turkish rather than through English. He received the name register with the passport copies and produced fourteen translations in two working days. Before they went to the notary, Nataliia checked each one against the passport and the register. The notary certifies the translator's signature, so every letter in the translation itself is our responsibility, and we check it before the document gets its seal.

All fourteen applications were filed on the same day in week four. The law requires a decision on issuing a permit within seven working days of the application being registered; the permits were issued in five. We never leave it to the employment centre to decide whether a one-letter difference is a mere typo: in every application the name matched the translation and the draft contract character for character.

• first name and surname in the translation exactly as in the register;
• date of birth and passport expiry date without day and month swapped;
• passport number and issuing authority as in the passport;
• place of birth written the same way for everyone born in the same district;
• the translation covers every page with personal data, not just the first.

06 / The contract

An online translator, an urgent contract and a text in two columns

The laundry drafted the employment contract itself, and the HR director wanted to save everyone time. Along with the Ukrainian text she sent Emre a Turkish version made with an online translator, so it could go straight to the candidates. Emre read it that evening and stopped in the very first section. The fixed-term employment contract had become acil in the Turkish text, meaning urgent. The temporary residence permit had turned into geçici konaklama belgesi, a certificate of temporary accommodation, like a hotel booking. And the work permit had shrunk to the word izin, which in Turkish means both permission and leave.

For people who had spent years working in hotels, the text could only be read one way: the contract could be ended any day, the accommodation was something like a room for a few nights, and nothing was clear about the right to work. None of that was in the laundry's contract. The next morning Nataliia and Emre showed the HR director these three passages, and she agreed that the Turkish text should be done by the same translator as the passports, following an agreed glossary.

The glossary fits on one page. It holds twenty-two terms that appear in the contract, the information sheet and the worker's guide: fixed-term employment contract - belirli süreli iş sözleşmesi, work permit - çalışma izni, temporary residence permit - geçici ikamet izni, employer - işveren. Each term means the same in the Turkish text as in the Ukrainian one and is spelt the same way in every document for the group.

The second rule was about timing. The draft employment contract certified by the employer goes into the permit application, so we produced the Turkish column only from the final Ukrainian version, the very one that went to the employment centre. The contract was laid out in two columns: Ukrainian on the left, Turkish on the right, paragraph facing paragraph, with identical clause numbers. Any later change would have had to go into both columns at once, but no changes were needed.

1. 01

   Fixed-term employment contract

   Machine translation: acil, urgent. Glossary: belirli süreli iş sözleşmesi.

2. 02

   Temporary residence permit

   Machine translation: certificate of temporary accommodation. Glossary: geçici ikamet izni.

3. 03

   Work permit

   Machine translation: izin, permission or leave. Glossary: çalışma izni.

4. 04

   Names in the contract

   In Turkish letters in the Turkish column, in Ukrainian from the register in the Ukrainian one.

07 / Reading

Three video calls, six pages in Turkish and a pencil in hand

We sent the two-column contract to the partner together with the information sheet in Turkish, and the partner printed a personal copy for every candidate. Emre then held three video calls with groups of five. He did not summarise the contract: he read the Turkish column section by section, stopping after each one to ask what was unclear. People sat in the partner's office with printouts and pencils, underlining what they wanted to ask about.

Serkan underlined the clause on the term. He had signed seasonal contracts for nine years and wanted to know what would happen when the year was up. Emre explained that a permit for a hired worker is issued for the term of the employment contract, but for no more than two years, and that an extension application is filed in advance, no later than twenty and no earlier than fifty calendar days before the term ends. We keep that date in our deadline register, and Serkan will hear about it from us long before it arrives.

Hatice asked about accommodation: could she register at the hostel address, and who would handle it? We had checked the documents for the laundry's hostel before filing for permits, as part of accommodation support: the address worked both for residence registration and for residence permits, so the answer was short. Oğuz asked who pays for the permits and translations. State fees are paid by the company, and under the rules of our contract with the partner candidates pay nothing for employment, which is stated plainly in their information sheet.

The information sheet in Turkish repeated the key points of the contract and added what the contract does not cover: how to travel, which documents to keep on hand, what to say at the border, whom to call. At the end each person signed an acknowledgement: information received before departure, draft contract read, conditions understood, no money taken for employment. Fourteen acknowledgements came back with signatures that matched the ones in the passports.

Contract

Two columns, a personal copy for everyone

Information sheet

In Turkish, with an acknowledgement signed before departure

Worker's guide

In Turkish: travel, documents, border, phone numbers

Contact

Emre in Turkish and the laundry's HR department

08 / Entry and signing

The border, the hostel and a signature under a text already read

In week six the group set off: a flight to Chișinău, then a bus to the border crossing and on into Ukraine. Everyone carried a folder with their passport, a copy of the permit, the hostel address and Emre's phone number. What to say about the purpose of the trip had been covered on the video call: work under a permit, the name of the laundry, the address. More about this route is on the visa-free entry page. The group arrived on Sunday evening, and Emre met them and drove them to the hostel.

On Monday the HR department signed employment contracts with all fourteen. Each person received their own two-column copy, and it contained not a single sentence they had not already seen in Manavgat. There were hardly any questions at signing: they had all been asked on the video calls. We filed the copies of the contracts with the employment centre within the 10-day period the law requires.

Then came the familiar part: tax numbers, bank accounts, applications for temporary residence permits in two groups of seven and residence registration. The name register proved useful again: the migration partner took the spellings from the same register, and none of the residence permit applications needed correcting. Every worker received a guide in Turkish with Emre's number and the HR contact, and we continue to handle the group's documents through migration support. Training and assigning people to sections is up to the laundry.

1. Week 1

   Request, choice of country, contract with WORKIN, the partner in Manavgat collects applications.

2. Week 2

   Interviews in Turkish, 14 candidates and 2 in reserve, name register.

3. Week 3

   Passport translations, checks, notary, glossary and the two-column contract.

4. Week 4

   14 permit applications filed on the same day.

5. Week 5

   Permits issued, three video calls reading the contract, acknowledgements signed.

6. Week 6

   Entry via Moldova, employment contracts on the first working day.

7. Week 7-8

   Contract copies to the employment centre, residence permit applications.

09 / Summary

Fourteen signatures under a text everyone had read in Turkish

Names

One register, three spellings per person, not a single mismatch

Translations

14 passports checked against the register before the notary

Permits

14 applications on one day, decisions in five working days

Contract

Two columns from one version, a glossary of 22 terms

Entry

Week six, contracts signed on the first working day

A language barrier in documents is not overcome with a translation app on signing day. It is removed by the order we set up before filing: one name register, one glossary, one version of the contract and time for people to read it at home in their own language. The language may be Turkish, Bengali or Hindi, but the order at WORKIN stays the same, and it is what gives a company workers who know what they have signed. The WORKIN replacement guarantee runs for at least 6 months from the worker's first shift, provided the agreed working, pay and housing conditions are met: recruiting a replacement is not charged again, while state fees, the migration partner's services, the new worker's flight and living costs are paid by the company. How language skills of crew leads are checked in a Turkish crew is covered in the scenario about a facade crew, and how Turkish qualification documents are prepared is covered in the scenario about deboners for a meat plant. The whole route is on the How it works page, and the laundry's obligations as an employer are on the employer duties page. More on the pages about HoReCa staff, recruitment and documents for candidates.

10 / FAQ

Questions and answers