- All
- After the Translation Test
- After Translation Certification
- Taking the Translation Test
- Translation Certification
- Translation Test Costs
- Translation Test Design
No, we do not offer translation courses or programs, only a test. We do recommend translation courses as a way to develop your professional abilities, but in our experience these programs are not always necessary for becoming a qualified translator. If you do decide to enroll in a course, please do your research to ensure that the program is not a scam and that it is taught by qualified translators (always confirm who the teachers will be beforehand and research their credentials).
It was our goal to make a testing procedure that was affordable to all our linguists, especially those living in developing countries who have nonetheless worked hard to grow as professionals and want to demonstrate the results of their hard work. While this certificate can be presented to any client or agency, this reliable testing procedure has also allowed us to expand our own database of reliable translators, so it was in our best interests to make it as accessible as possible.
Your payment covers the costs of designing and vetting each test, as well as the costs of evaluation, along with administrative costs.
Translation certification is the process by which a qualified entity deems a given translator to have met the criteria necessary for working as a translator.
While many certification procedures originated from those designed by government bodies, the trends in our ever-globalizing industry have now moved towards certifications by professional associations (such as the American Translator’s Association) or private companies (such as ALTA or Kaplan). This is partly because not all countries have government entities that regulate such certification, but also because translators are no longer expected to receive all of their work from a single country, and thus prefer certifications that are not tied to specific countries, given the cost of the procedures.
The Meridian Linguistics Testing Service is a branch of Meridian Linguistics Limited, a private linguistic consulting company based in Hong Kong. After finding a dearth of affordable translation procedures available to many of our skilled linguists, we launched our testing service in order to lower the financial barriers to demonstrating translation ability.
No, this testing service is not designed by or affiliated with the ATA. While Meridian Linguistics is a corporate member of the ATA and adheres to their bylaws, the tests and certification has no bearing on ATA certification procedures. The test was designed and tested by Meridian Linguists to be an affordable alternative or supplemental certification, in an effort to lower the barriers to certification for qualified translators who cannot yet afford a more expensive procedure, or who work in a language pair not offered by the ATA. While we strongly endorse ATA certification, our test is designed very differently. Our goal is to provide a more precise breakdown of your abilities as a translator, while correcting for many potential issues in subjectivity.
Your certificate has a Credential Code on it, and this number can be independently verified with Meridian Linguistics, by scrolling to the bottom of the testing page and entering the code for verification.
You will be provided a PDF certificate. Feel free to append this to your CV, attach it to client e-mails, or upload it to your profiles on ProZ and TranslatorsCafe.
We are very grateful for any and all feedback. Please e-mail us.
Unfortunately you cannot retake the same version, however we will be launching new versions approximately every 6 months. You can however take another language pair or direction, or another subject matter.
Unfortunately we are not able to provide you with the answer key, however we can assure you that any ambiguity results in the test being evaluated by a second independent reviewer, and that the test itself has been designed to remove as much subjectivity as possible. If a testee scores very highly on objective portions (multiple choice) and low on subjective portions (essays and comprehensive translation) this raises an alert and triggers a second evaluation to ensure objectivity as well as reliability.
We cannot provide you with the test answers, however you will be provided with a scoring sheet that breaks down your performance for each component so that you can see where you excelled and where you could use some work. In some cases, evaluators will also provide written comments.
Qualified Meridian Linguists who have been thoroughly trained in our scoring system. Tests falling within a zone of uncertainty (10 points below passing) are evaluated by a second linguist to ensure the reliability of the evaluation.
1) It is important to us that we make these tests affordable to everyone, as we realized there is a lack of options for translators who are qualified but perhaps still early on in their careers, without the resources to pay for more expensive certification procedures. While the tests only need to be redesigned on an infrequent basis, evaluations require qualified human labor for each evaluation. Furthermore, some testees may take the test and then decide not to proceed with evaluation because they feel that they didn’t perform as well as they had hoped, and they would rather study some more and take the next version.
2) Finally, whenever we offer sales, discounts, and other promotions, splitting the costs means that we can afford to offer larger discounts on the test, despite the fact that we are less flexible with evaluation costs, since our qualified evaluators deserve to be paid every penny for their diligent and thorough work.
By splitting these costs, we are able to offer the test at the lowest possible price, to make it more affordable for everyone.
In the same section of our website where you clicked to purchase your test, there is an option that says “Evaluation”. You can click “Request Purchase” and upload your documents there. Alternatively, you can e-mail your documents to us here. After your documents have been received you will receive a payment request. Once paid, we will begin evaluation.
Other testing entities may disagree with us on this, but we are pragmatic about the translation process. Good translators use everything at their disposal to ensure a quality translation, and yes, sometimes that means calling a technical expert for help with terminology, or asking your foreign spouse to double-check meaning. As long as you are using the same (human) resources that you would use to deliver future translation work (honor system here) you may ask others for help as long as you are not posting these questions on the internet.
This is also why we are less concerned with the fact that this test is online and not onsite, because after all, most translation takes place online where conditions will not be sterile and identities cannot be verified. And short of getting your hands on our answer key, which we do not disseminate, there is no way to actually cheat on this test in a way that ensures your success.
This is not permitted, and our web crawler will immediately detect the posting of any test content online and alert us. If we are able to identify the poster, this test will be voided and you will be blacklisted from future translation work.
No problem, you are not required to complete this test in one sitting.
You may type or draw right on the test PDF, as long as your answers are legible. You may also write your answers in a separate word document.
Feel free to highlight, circle, arrow, or use any other marking that is clear.
We highly discourage this. If our machine translation detector detects machine translation, your test may be voided. It is safer to translate from scratch than to hope you made enough changes to the MT text that it won’t be detected.
Yes! Translators use the internet for their work, and we find it odd that some tests and certifications do not allow the use of the internet for their exams as it does not properly replicate the conditions for which you will successfully deliver work in the future. Furthermore, a whole section of this test is devoted to your ability to efficiently use the internet for research.
HOWEVER, you may not post questions in forums or outsource this test to another vendor.
There is no need to take the test in a single sitting, you can take as many breaks as you like. Feel free to submit your test for evaluation at any time, there is no deadline.
It takes most testees between 35-50 minutes to complete the test.
Unfortunately, we cannot offer refunds to testees that did not pass, as it takes our evaluators time to carefully review your work and provide feedback that we hope is helpful to you in the future!
Yes, feel free to e-mail us to discuss other possible methods.
You can pay online by Paypal or by Credit Card (securely processed by Paypal).
For a few reasons.
1) It is important to us that we make these tests affordable to everyone, as we realized there is a lack of options for translators who are qualified but perhaps still early on in their careers, without the resources to pay for more expensive certification procedures. While the tests only need to be redesigned on an infrequent basis, evaluations require qualified human labor for each evaluation. Furthermore, some testees may take the test and then decide not to proceed with evaluation because they feel that they didn’t perform as well as they had hoped, and they would rather study some more and take the next version.
2) Finally, whenever we offer sales, discounts, and other promotions, splitting the costs means that we can afford to offer larger discounts on the test, despite the fact that we are less flexible with evaluation costs, since our qualified evaluators deserve to be paid every penny for their diligent and thorough work.
By splitting these costs, we are able to offer the test at the lowest possible price, to make it more affordable for everyone.
It costs USD $9.99 to download a translation test, and USD $19.99 to have the test evaluated for certification. You are under no obligation to have the test evaluated if you feel that you might not have passed the test or if you were taking the test for reasons other than certification. We split the price in this way in order to offer the test at the most affordable possible price.
We currently only offer general subject matter tests, but we will soon be offering legal, financial, journalistic, technical, and medical tests.
We currently offer a Spanish to English General Translation Test, French to English General Translation Test, and Chinese to English translation test. More languages are in development. If you don’t see your language here, please reach out to us and let us know there is demand for your language pair.
You will download a PDF test paper, and can return your answers on that same paper or in a separate word document.
This test is broken down into four sections: comprehension of the source language, fluency of the target, internet research ability, and comprehensive translation ability. The comprehension section is multiple choice. The fluency section is partially multiple choice, partially short essay. The research ability section requires written answers. The comprehensive translation ability is a very short passage to be translated into your native language (shorter than most translation tests, because we have already evaluated your abilities with the preceding sections).
Each test was designed in collaboration with an expert test design consultant as well as dozens of qualified linguists working in the language pair in question. The tests were then “tested” by dozens of testees, who provided feedback on each version until we reached a test that was an appropriate difficulty level and reliably measured the various components of translation ability.