For Clients

Clients, do you want high-quality, professional translation?

Then I suggest that you chose a certified translator or work with a translation company that uses certified translators.

ATA Certification is your minimum assurance of a translator's ability, experience, and professionalism. There is a huge surplus of wanna-be translators in the world, but a definite shortage of truly professional ones.

ATA Certification is the most rigorous, objective, and widely recognized translator certification program in America. Translators who take the ATA Certification exam at least understand the value of belonging to a professional organization, developing their skills, and demonstrating them in a controlled setting. And yet, fewer than 20% of those who take the exam pass.

Why?

I assure you that it is not because of nitpicking or any desire on the part of the graders to maintain a closed shop. It is because most candidates cannot produce a translation with fewer than 18 error points in a 275-word translation.

What is considered an error?

Various types of errors and the grading system are explained on the ATA website and in “Boom or Bane?", an article by Boris Silversteyn and James Walker that appeared in the Proceedings of the 46th Annual ATA Conference. Translation is always somewhat subjective, and grading a translation is necessarily doubly subjective: a subjective judgment of a subjective product. But the ATA Certification Committee and individual grader groups in specific language combinations have been working for many years to make the certification exam a fair and valid test of translation ability. I firmly believe that the ATA certification exam is as objective as is humanly possible (and God forbid that we should ever let machines judge translation!).