Founded over sixty years ago in 1959, the American Translators Association (ATA) is the largest professional association of translators and interpreters in the U.S. with over 10,000 members. Despite being an American-based organization, its members (which include translators, interpreters, educators, project managers, and web and software developers, among other roles) contribute on an international level, reaching over 100 countries.
Based on volunteer involvement, ATA aims to advance the translation and interpreting professions and provide professional development to its members. When clients request an accurate, quality translation for their needs, ATA members are professionals who have the necessary linguistic and cultural expertise to skillfully transfer content.
One major characteristic of ATA is that it provides a certification to applicants: an ATA certification is recognized as one of the translation industry’s most notable credentials and is the only widely recognized measure of ability. Similar to Adobe’s Certified Professional process, the ATA requires recipients to consistently retest to maintain their credential. Certifications are given for specific language pairs and directions (from or into English), including (but certainly not limited to): English into Arabic, English into Korean, Danish into English, English into Romanian, and Ukrainian into English. Despite this broad list, thousands of languages are not included (primarily African, South Asian, and indigenous languages); therefore, in recognition of this, ATA has procedures to establish a new language combination if so desired.
To earn such certification, a translator must pass a pass-fail, three-hour proctored exam, which assesses the following three skills: comprehension of the source-language text, translation techniques, and writing in the target language. Test-takers are expected to translate two out of three university-level passages that are 225 to 275 words in length, which may include dense content but actively avoids highly specialized terminology requiring research. It is an open book exam, so test-takers are allowed to reference a general dictionary when facing difficult terminology. Furthermore, test-takers must follow the guidelines provided in the translation instructions (TIs) included in each exam passage. These TIs specify the desired nature of the translation (text source and translation purpose, audience, and medium) and act as the requests of a pseudo client.
The current pass rate is less than 20% and less than 2,000 ATA members are certified out of its total 10,000 members. These selection statistics demonstrate the high standard of quality ATA expects. While millions of multilingual speakers can provide high-quality translations, the certificate is an undeniable benchmark of ability that can prove useful in obtaining an occupation in the translation and interpreting industry. For anyone who wants to be recognized by a standardized metric of competence (and, oppositely, anyone who wants to employ the skills of someone like this), the ATA and its certification test is a reliable avenue in doing so.