Marc wrote:
> A question to the cognescenti......
> 
> There does not seem to be any regulatory body that
> actually licenses translators worldwide.

"Worldwide"? There's the UN exam, but that's UN-specific.

http://www.atanet.org/

Specifically,

http://www.atanet.org/bin/view.pl/285.html

will be of interest of you and your "damn good" translation.

In Japan, there's

http://www.jtf.jp/

Again, specifically,

http://www.jtf.jp/07.html

There's also

http://www.jta-net.or.jp/

Specifically,

http://www.jta-net.or.jp/jta-10.html

There's probably more.