Question about ALTA test
Thread poster: WeiYi Jiang
WeiYi Jiang
WeiYi Jiang  Identity Verified
Taiwan
Member (2019)
English to Chinese
+ ...
Jul 14, 2020

Hello Everyone,
I am a translator from Taiwan. I just got two contacts from 2 separate companies
and they both asked me to take a test of ALTA as a part of their onboarding process.
The tests were made of 3 short pieces of news and I had to translate the the first and one of the other two by my choice.
I've got the result of the first test, and, for I just got 10/12 and the assigning company wanted only 11+, I failed to their test.
Just for curious, for all ALTA tes
... See more
Hello Everyone,
I am a translator from Taiwan. I just got two contacts from 2 separate companies
and they both asked me to take a test of ALTA as a part of their onboarding process.
The tests were made of 3 short pieces of news and I had to translate the the first and one of the other two by my choice.
I've got the result of the first test, and, for I just got 10/12 and the assigning company wanted only 11+, I failed to their test.
Just for curious, for all ALTA tests seem like from news paper, do they have emphasis on some specific areas like literary?
Is 10 score bad for their test?
Thank you for any share in advance.
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Samuel Murray
Samuel Murray  Identity Verified
Netherlands
Local time: 19:10
Member (2006)
English to Afrikaans
+ ...
@WeiYi Jul 14, 2020

WeiYi Jiang wrote:
I've got the result of the first test, and, for I just got 10/12 and the assigning company wanted only 11+, I failed to their test. ... Is 10 score bad for their test?


I've never heard of these tests until today. From what I can tell, based on the description of the scale, 10 is not a terrible score, but I can understand why a client would prefer an 11.

Capture-1

Did you get back a list of errors that you made? Do you agree that you made "a few errors with advanced grammar or structures"?

[Edited at 2020-07-14 07:49 GMT]


WeiYi Jiang
Aline Amorim
 
WeiYi Jiang
WeiYi Jiang  Identity Verified
Taiwan
Member (2019)
English to Chinese
+ ...
TOPIC STARTER
@Samuel Murray Jul 14, 2020

Thank you for such discussion.
Actually I don't think there's any substantial error.
Because I somehow found a way to keep my test,
discussing it with someone else after submitting the test, and we didn't find anything,
I guess they have some principles which I didn't take into account and they thought that's error,
e.g. they might insist some extent of literal translation,
so that they might see some omission, division, combination etc. as errors,
even
... See more
Thank you for such discussion.
Actually I don't think there's any substantial error.
Because I somehow found a way to keep my test,
discussing it with someone else after submitting the test, and we didn't find anything,
I guess they have some principles which I didn't take into account and they thought that's error,
e.g. they might insist some extent of literal translation,
so that they might see some omission, division, combination etc. as errors,
even the translation is accurate and fluent in the target language.
That's actually why I posted such question to discuss here.
No specific report provided, so I cannot learn what errors I committed, wither.
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Liviu-Lee Roth
Liviu-Lee Roth
United States
Local time: 14:10
Romanian to English
+ ...
ALTA Jul 14, 2020

In the past 10 years I took the test several times for several agencies. The test has certain „markers” and the evaluator must abide by them when grading. If you missed such markers (let's say instead of "great" you translated "wonderful") they deduct points.

This is all about the test.
Good luck next time,
lee


Kuochoe Nikoi-Kotei
 
Hani Hassaan
Hani Hassaan  Identity Verified
Egypt
Local time: 20:10
Member
English to Arabic
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER
WHo pays? Jul 14, 2020

Hello WeiYi,
Did you pay for this exam? or the Translation agencies paid to evaluate your skills? and the exams from English to your native tongue only?
How many words and allowed time?


 


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Question about ALTA test







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