Translation testing (NOT a translation request)

[wai ming]

Just wondering if anyone here has ever taken a Chinese-English translation test. It's always been a dream of mine, to become a qualified translator, but I've always dismissed the idea, thinking that my Chinese just wasn't up to scratch. However, looking at a sample NAATI (the official interpreting and translating accreditation body in Australia), I realised that the level of difficulty wasn't at high as I had originally expected. On average, the texts seemed to be about newspaper standard. From the candidate's manual, I have gathered that:

• Published dictionaries, glossaries and thesauri are permitted, including electronic versions, provided they are not for use on a computer.
  
• Passages may be drawn from subject areas including culture, science, technology, health, law, and commerce aimed at the non-specialist reader.
  
• You must select one passage in simplified characters and another in traditional characters.
  

Does anyone have any ideas on practicing and building vocabulary to prepare for such a test? In-country practice (ie going to a Chinese-speaking country) and formal courses are probably not a feasible option in my situation...

[gato]

You can practice translating Chinese news articles here:

http://www.translationwiki.net/index2.php?action=trans

http://pressinterpreter.org/chinese

[roddy]

This is quite interesting stuff. The Chinese>English translation test involves only two 250 word (not sure if this means characters or actual words) passages and 3 ethics questions (common sense, surely ) in 2.5 hours. And you can use dictionaries

I'd be interested to see the actual passages if anyone has them.

Do we have any qualified translators on the board?

As for building vocab, I'd guess if you don't want to use actual study materials, just read as much as possible of the kind of thing you might find in the exam - sounds like newpapers / magazines would be the way to go.

Roddy

[zh-laoshi]

Do we have any qualified translators on the board?

I qualified as a Chinese-English-Chinese translator way back in 1986, but the tests were different then. I had to translate material in 6 different subject areas (papermaking, textiles, concrete making, environmental issues, general translations, etc). and had to translate different types of printed matter (from crisp clear type to barely seeable photocopies ).

It seems like things are different now. I was allowed just one dictionary - and I made sure it was the best I can find for translation work. If I can find my testing materials, maybe I can scan them and post them somewhere for everyone to see the "torture" I had to go through.

[kimichen]

I sat NAATI last week. Quite a few people are there. My exam was English into Chinese translation, professional level. A lot of people here (Australia) take it in order to meet the immigration requirement. I prepare to start my preparation of interpreting and translation (Chinese into English). Looking for some study mates. If you are doing English into Chinese, we can help each other.

By the way, regardless of the ability of translators, I think into Chinese is more demanding than into English because Chinese are concise in space but wordy in word-count. For example,

Chinese --> 中文

concise --> 简捷

wordy --> 冗长

3 English words into 6 Chinese ones.

So if you get a 250 word Chinese text, it will become a shorter English text after translation. In addition to word-count, Chinese writing takes more time, especially I use Traditional Chinese. It is okay when using PC.