We consider the forced escape of a polymer out of a potential well. The process has two steps - crossing the activation barrier, and translocation of the chain over the barrier. We suggest that translocation occurs by the motion of a kink, whose shape and velocity change as more and more beads of the polymer have come out of the potential well. We find that for short polymers, the translocation time t(trans) similar to ln(n(0)), where n(0) is the number of beads that have crossed the barrier. For long chains, the translocation time similar toN, the total number of beads. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.