For Translators

Translators, are you ATA Certified? If so, congratulations! If not, why not?
Don't think you can afford to take the exam?

If you want to be a professional translator, you can't afford not to. My average annual income in the first five years after I took the exam and became certified was up more than $30,000 over my average for the previous five years.

Afraid you might not pass? Believe me, I sympathize (see How I Became a Translator). I can certainly understand why you might be reluctant to submit to an examination of your translation abilities. You already know that you're good and maybe not just good, you are the very best. Why let someone else tell you different?

But, after eight years as a grader of Russian-English certification exams and four years as Chair of the Russian-English graders' group, I can assure you that every effort is made to make the exam the most objective possible evaluation of a necessarily subjective product - translation.

If you are a conscientious translator with several years of full-time experience, you should be able to pass the exam (see Boon or Bane for more information about the Russian-English exam).

Distance is certainly an obstacle, but not an insurmountable one. It just takes some effort to organize an exam sitting nearby, even in another country, such as Russia.

I wholeheartedly support making the ATA Certification exam available and convenient for translators outside the USA.

The only valid excuse that I can think of for not taking the exam is that you translate in a language pair for which the ATA does not offer certification.

There is one more excuse, which I do not like to hear. You may think that you don't need to be certified because you have plenty of work already. Did you ever think about supporting the profession and demonstrating some solidarity with your colleagues? Translators as a group will never receive the respect that our knowledge, skills, and experience deserve until the profession as a whole is properly respected, which requires a criterion that is widely recognized as an essential mark of a professional translation. That criterion is ATA Certification.
I suppose that a translator in some situations might not personally benefit from certification, such as a translation teacher or an in-house translator with a steady job and a reliable salary. But how could someone claim to teach translation if they cannot pass a minimal competency exam? And it seems to me that even someone with a secure job or a steady source of work would have enough confidence and pride to want to demonstrate his or her abilities. Or, as I said, just do it to support the profession.