| Pages in topic: < [1 2] | Tests for agencies/clients Thread poster: Frances Leggett
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I've done tests for translation agencies and in some cases got feedback that I passed, but then no work followed! I've also done quite long tests where I didn't receive feedback at all. Now I feel slightly wary of tests. So I have actually never got work from an agency that asked me to do a 'free' test, just like some others have mentioned here!
And I have also, as mentioned here, done a paid test and 'passed' and then got more work. Seems like paid tests are the way to go!! ... See more I've done tests for translation agencies and in some cases got feedback that I passed, but then no work followed! I've also done quite long tests where I didn't receive feedback at all. Now I feel slightly wary of tests. So I have actually never got work from an agency that asked me to do a 'free' test, just like some others have mentioned here!
And I have also, as mentioned here, done a paid test and 'passed' and then got more work. Seems like paid tests are the way to go!!
I wouldn't be very inclined to do this grammar test. I think it's quite a strange request. I am also a qualified English teacher and was once asked by a coordinator of an English school in Brazil to do an English 'test' before he would even interview me. There were 100 fill-in-the-gap questions on English grammar and he said I needed to get 70+ to be considered for the job. His English was so bad that I declined and left. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Oliver Walter 
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:26
German to English
+ ...
| They 'know' so much | Sep 17, 2011 |
Lindsay Spratt wrote:
I am also a qualified English teacher and was once asked by a coordinator of an English school in Brazil to do an English 'test' before he would even interview me. There were 100 fill-in-the-gap questions on English grammar and he said I needed to get 70+ to be considered for the job. His English was so bad that I declined and left. That reminded me of this quote:
The trouble with people is not that they don't know,
but that they know so much that ain't so.
Josh Billings
Oliver
| | | | Frances Leggett
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:26
Italian to English
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TOPIC STARTER | Interesting points of view | Sep 19, 2011 |
I have found all your contributions extremely helpful.
I think many of you are right when you say "if you want to work for this agency, you'll need to do their tests" and I suppose that is the way it goes.
I hadn't considered this "Cloze test" as a way of testing my comprehension of context; I saw it much more as a test of my ability to produce grammatically correct right words in Italian which I didn't really see the point of because I do not produce texts in Italian.
Despite ... See more I have found all your contributions extremely helpful.
I think many of you are right when you say "if you want to work for this agency, you'll need to do their tests" and I suppose that is the way it goes.
I hadn't considered this "Cloze test" as a way of testing my comprehension of context; I saw it much more as a test of my ability to produce grammatically correct right words in Italian which I didn't really see the point of because I do not produce texts in Italian.
Despite the fact that this sort of test does aim to test my comprehension of context, I still think that could be done in a straightforward manner with just the standard translation test and I think that two free tests (with the Cloze test having 60 questions and being time consuming) is a bit excessive for any agency.
In any case, I think that even if a translator competently does a translation test for an agency, the agency can only really see how the translator works by giving them work to do and seeing the result.
I also find it really interesting that paid tests often lead to work, but unpaid tests don't. I suppose some agencies work on the basis of putting out bulk advertisements, asking candidates to each translate a small portion of text and they end up with a translation of an entire document... for free. But I don't think this was the case with this agency as they wouldn't have gone to the trouble of sending me a 60 question fill-the-gap test to do as well!
My conclusion: I might just do the Cloze test for them and while I am filling in the gaps, I will correct the Italian mistakes in the text as well to give them something extra to assess me on. But as they are free tests, they will have to wait until a rainy day! ▲ Collapse
| | | | Frances Leggett
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:26
Italian to English
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TOPIC STARTER
José Henrique Lamensdorf wrote:
Though I passed many tests, I have never been assigned any job by any of the companies/people who had me take them. One of these - on which I got feedback - was quite peculiar: the reviewer/evaluator condescendingly passed me, yet considering the corrections that person made to my translation, I'd have failed him/her!
Well, that's a bit the way I felt when asked to spend an hour or so on this test (to test my production in Italian) which contained Italian grammatical errors and wrong accents. Hmmmmm....
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DZiW (X)
Ukraine
English to Russian
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| (very) grammar test | Sep 19, 2011 |
Once I also got a (rather comprehensive) grammar test from one quite respected international company and it made me feel as if I were on my third year once again... It was a long list of quotations from famous English and American writers with a pure piece of practical grammar task regarding compound and complex sentences: composition, lexicology, syntax, etc.
I was almost shocked for it really had nothing to do with translation, rather coordinations-subordinations, those subject cl... See more Once I also got a (rather comprehensive) grammar test from one quite respected international company and it made me feel as if I were on my third year once again... It was a long list of quotations from famous English and American writers with a pure piece of practical grammar task regarding compound and complex sentences: composition, lexicology, syntax, etc.
I was almost shocked for it really had nothing to do with translation, rather coordinations-subordinations, those subject clauses, predicative clauses, object clauses, attributive clauses, adverbial clauses, finite and non-finite forms, structures, syntactical analysis and graphic(al) representations...
Although it was quite a piece of cake and I enjoy reading classic writers it did took rather much time, thus having done the first page I gave up. Imagine my sheer joy when they replied it was 'quite ok', but there was a--who knows?--little mistake and I had to do some other test--according my specialization (whereas I had specified none--as 'general').
Boy, it is a pity, but it's not my cup of tea because if I were to do grammar I'd rather work as a teacher
Cheers. ▲ Collapse
| | | | Neil Coffey
United Kingdom
Local time: 13:26
French to English
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| Reason for testing source language | Sep 19, 2011 |
Frances Leggett wrote:
context; I saw it much more as a test of my ability to produce grammatically correct right words in Italian which I didn't really see the point of because I do not produce texts in Italian.
I would personally never set a colleague a test of the type you mentioned, anything because it seems unprofessional to treat colleagues as school students in quite this way.
But... when I've been seeking people to collaborate with, I have noticed (and the agency may have noticed) a correlation between fellow translators' production of their source language (e.g. in covering letters, discussions about the translation) and their ability to appreciate more subtle distinctions of meaning/intent in the texts they're translating from. The agency may also have noticed this and so decided to test your source language production directly (albeit in a fundamentally childish way).
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