The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2020 - 38

CERTIFICATION FORUM

BY BEN KARL

12 Extra-Linguistic Skills You Need to Master before
Taking ATA's Certification Exam

Y

ou've decided to take ATA's
certification exam. You've worked
professionally as a translator
for several years and you've taken
(and passed) the practice test1 in your
language pair. You're confident in your
language and translation skills and
you're ready to tackle the actual
exam. Congratulations!
Have you also considered the extralinguistic skills you'll need to succeed,
especially for the computerized exam?
As many certification exam proctors can
attest, exam candidates often overlook
some or all of these skills. These skills
are just as important as the ability to spot
and avoid translation pitfalls or check
spelling without the help of a computer
program. Below are 12 extra-linguistic
(read: not language- or translationrelated) skills you should practice and
perfect before taking the exam.
1. Know How to Focus Under
Pressure: Test anxiety is real, and it
can be debilitating. Translators who
work perfectly well in their normal
work environments can crack under
the pressure of testing conditions. We
all work in a way that's different from
a testing environment. When you take
the practice test, simulate the exam
environment as much as possible so that
the conditions on exam day don't throw
you for a loop. On the day of your
sitting, practice relaxation techniques
before you start to keep your brain
focused during the exam. West Virginia
University has an excellent guide on
anxiety that includes techniques for
reducing test anxiety before and during
your exam.2
2. Know Your Computer: This skill
may sound obvious, but it might
surprise you how many people borrow
a friend's computer or are working
on a brand-new computer. Make sure
any necessary keyboards for your
38

The ATA Chronicle | January/February 2020

4. Know How to Generate a PDF: For
grading purposes, exams are saved to
PDF rather than a word processing file
format (in this case, .rtf). PDF files are
handy because they're harder to modify
(e.g., accidentally adding or deleting a
word is impossible) and easy to view
on computers with the necessary (free)
software. The most common way to save
a file as a PDF is to "Print" it as a PDF.
Instructions for doing so can be found
online for both PCs and Macs.7

Have you also considered the
extra-linguistic skills you'll need
to succeed, especially for the
computerized exam?

language pair(s) are installed, you have
a PDF viewer (such as Adobe Reader3)
installed, and your computer has a USB
port4. If you use other hardware, like a
mouse, make sure it's compatible with
your computer and you have everything
ready to use it properly. Frantically
troubleshooting IT issues on exam day
will not set you up for success.
3. Know How to Insert, Remove,
and Save to a USB Flash Drive: For
the computerized exam, your files are
saved to and transferred using USB
flash drives.5 After making sure your
computer has the necessary port (see
above), make sure you know how to
connect, open, save to, and eject a
flash drive (YouTube).6 You'll save your
working files to a flash drive (not your
computer) during the exam, and your
files will be sent to the grader using the
flash drive.

5. Know How to Save Your Work:
This point may seem like a given, and
it should be, considering how much
we work on computers. It's easy to get
distracted by the exam environment and
be so engrossed that you forget to save.
But even after reminding exam takers at
regular intervals to save their work to
the USB drive, at the end of the exam,
not only have some people not saved
their documents even a single time, but
the USB drivers they were given were
not even inserted into their computers.
Save at regular intervals using a
keyboard shortcut and be sure to
familiarize yourself with the difference
between Save and Save As.8
6. Mac Users: Know How to Disable
Spell Check in TextEdit: Exam
candidates must complete their exam
using a word processor without a
spell check feature (WordPad on PC,
TextEdit on Mac). The Mac program
TextEdit does have a spell check feature
that needs to be disabled for the test.
To disable, go to Edit > Spelling and
Grammar > Check Spelling While
Typing. If there's a check mark next to
this option, spell check is active. Click
the option to disable it. Navigate back
to the option to make sure it has been
disabled (the check mark will have
disappeared). Make sure to do this
before the exam starts and before you
create your first file.
www.atanet.org
http://www.atanet.org
The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - January/February 2020
