Certification testing
I'm back from taking the certification exam for the American Translators Association, which is the big professional credential for my new profession. I feel weird.
It's been a Guinea worm of a week - sounds awful, doesn't it? I meant it to. (Don't follow the link. Trust me.) - and I've been going through an unusually deep depression for the last couple weeks, so my concern this morning was with oversleeping or otherwise missing my chance, since I won't have another one until next year. I managed to make it to the testing venue in plenty of time, and I feel I did a good job with the actual test. I used the entire time allotted to prepare my translations and to go over them carefully, and this was a good thing because I discovered while reviewing that I'd missed a few words on one of them, which could have done me in.
The way the test works is that we have one to translate one required passage of a non-specialized nature, and one of two optional passages that are more specialized. The specialized passages pertain either to scientific, technical or medical in content, or to business, legal or financial content. We're allowed to bring any number of paper dictionaries and glossaries for reference, but no electronic resources. On first glance, the former of these optional passages looked like the better choice; but, turning to it after completing the required passage, I found one crucial term that I could find the general meaning for the books I brought, but not the precise technical term I knew I would want, and I could tell it wouldn't come to me while I was in the testing room. (I checked when I got home, and I was right, no way I'd have done it justice.) So I did the business-legal-financial passage instead. This is what I want to specialize in anyway, so I'm glad it was something I could do at least a competent job of putting into English.
At this point it's in the hands of the graders. I don't know how strict they'll be about judging things such as placement of prepositions and subject-pronoun agreement - I revised a singular "they" out of one of my translations out of concern for this - but I just checked the ATA's standard for passing, which calls for "a level of obvious competence with some room for growth," and equates this to the following guidelines:
Can translate texts that contain not only facts but also abstract language, showing an emerging ability to capture their intended implications and many nuances. Such texts usually contain situations and events which are subject to value judgments of a personal or institutional kind, as in some newspaper editorials, propaganda tracts, and evaluations of projects. Linguistic knowledge of both the terminology and the means of expression specific to a subject field is strong enough to allow the translator to operate successfully within that field. Word choice and expression generally adhere to target language norms and rarely obscure meaning. The resulting product is a draft translation, subject to quality control.
.
Okay, I think I crossed that bar. I'll know for sure in approximately 15 weeks, so mid-December. Certification would be a nice Christmas gift.
It's been a Guinea worm of a week - sounds awful, doesn't it? I meant it to. (Don't follow the link. Trust me.) - and I've been going through an unusually deep depression for the last couple weeks, so my concern this morning was with oversleeping or otherwise missing my chance, since I won't have another one until next year. I managed to make it to the testing venue in plenty of time, and I feel I did a good job with the actual test. I used the entire time allotted to prepare my translations and to go over them carefully, and this was a good thing because I discovered while reviewing that I'd missed a few words on one of them, which could have done me in.
The way the test works is that we have one to translate one required passage of a non-specialized nature, and one of two optional passages that are more specialized. The specialized passages pertain either to scientific, technical or medical in content, or to business, legal or financial content. We're allowed to bring any number of paper dictionaries and glossaries for reference, but no electronic resources. On first glance, the former of these optional passages looked like the better choice; but, turning to it after completing the required passage, I found one crucial term that I could find the general meaning for the books I brought, but not the precise technical term I knew I would want, and I could tell it wouldn't come to me while I was in the testing room. (I checked when I got home, and I was right, no way I'd have done it justice.) So I did the business-legal-financial passage instead. This is what I want to specialize in anyway, so I'm glad it was something I could do at least a competent job of putting into English.
At this point it's in the hands of the graders. I don't know how strict they'll be about judging things such as placement of prepositions and subject-pronoun agreement - I revised a singular "they" out of one of my translations out of concern for this - but I just checked the ATA's standard for passing, which calls for "a level of obvious competence with some room for growth," and equates this to the following guidelines:
Can translate texts that contain not only facts but also abstract language, showing an emerging ability to capture their intended implications and many nuances. Such texts usually contain situations and events which are subject to value judgments of a personal or institutional kind, as in some newspaper editorials, propaganda tracts, and evaluations of projects. Linguistic knowledge of both the terminology and the means of expression specific to a subject field is strong enough to allow the translator to operate successfully within that field. Word choice and expression generally adhere to target language norms and rarely obscure meaning. The resulting product is a draft translation, subject to quality control.
.
Okay, I think I crossed that bar. I'll know for sure in approximately 15 weeks, so mid-December. Certification would be a nice Christmas gift.