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Has anyone heard of this school/institute? Global Translation Institute / (CTP Program)
Thread poster: Richard Levy (X)
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 06:51
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Misleading statements Aug 31, 2010

Adriana wrote:
1. Yes we are duly incorporated and regulated by law.

In my opinion you gave an intentionally misleading answer to my question, which was about whether you were a government body. You are clearly not. So a No in this case I reckon?
Adriana wrote:
2. Yes, we are an open translation organization that translators can join

This reply takes us to item 4. But it is a no. Correct me if I am wrong: translators may join your organisation either as clients or as employees, but not as equal members with a vote about the decisions of the organisation. Are you saying you are not a company or business? If you are a company or business, clearly you are not an association.
Adriana wrote:
3. Yes, translators actually lead and make up 100% of the executive and grading employees and contractors within the company.

This intentionally avoids the wording of my question. Le me repeat: "Can translation professionals vote in your organisation's decisions and bylaws?" Please respond.
Adriana wrote:
4. We do not elect officials like a democratic country by casting industry-wide votes...we like many other private training companies decide who will lead the company best and put that person in charge of the program. This is not abnormal.

So clearly you are not a professional association or organisation. You are a business, and as such you and maybe other people decide upon the company's matters. Translators joining your organisation have nothing to say about them. So it is a No to my question.
Adriana wrote:
5. Yes.

I cannot find a detailed description of the evaluation process in your website. Please provide a link!
Adriana wrote:
6. Yes, we do select publicly qualified and very experienced translators as graders.

OK. Let me ask you this: what is the pass rate of your certification exams?
Adriana wrote:
7. Yes, we do have appeal procedures and recently went through one for a candidate who did not agree with his grade. That has now been completely resolved and the candidate is satisfied with our appearl process.

I cannot find the appeal process described in your website. Please provide a link!
Adriana wrote:
8. Yes, our certification is recognized by many translation associations, networking groups, and many websites of professional translators including the TranslationDirectory International Association of Translators and Interpreters (IATI), TranslatorsTown.com, TranslationDirectory.com, an Arabic Translation Association, and dozens of other websites.

- International Association of Translators and Interpreters (IATI): You mean yourself? Isn't IATI one of the expressions of your own company?
- How do you explain that the only occurrence of "Certified Translation Professional" in TranslatorsTown.com is a link to your website?
Including a link to your website in a translator portal does not mean you are recognised by those companies. Also, my question was about public or private institutions, not other companies.

All in all, Adriana, let's face it: you are selling a course and a "certification" to people who A) have tried and cannot get certification via the several widely known and recognised schemes (which have very low pass rates as well as specific registration requirements) or higher education or B) are not aware that your certification has no official recognition whatsoever. Yes, it sounds lovely, but agencies know that this scheme means nothing unfortunately. I am somewhat sad for the people who are becoming certified under your scheme.

I insist: what is the pass rate of your exam?


Jorge Payan
Ewa Olszowa
 
CTP
CTP
United States
Answers to your questions... Aug 31, 2010

Tomas - you asked whether we were a government body or legally organized within our country to be in business. We are formed as a United States LLC and are legally operating here under their regulations. There is no intent to mislead or pretend that we are associated with a government body of any type.

The percentage of professionals who pass our examination is around 62%, higher than some programs pass rates and lower than others. Our goal is to offer a challenging and credible pro
... See more
Tomas - you asked whether we were a government body or legally organized within our country to be in business. We are formed as a United States LLC and are legally operating here under their regulations. There is no intent to mislead or pretend that we are associated with a government body of any type.

The percentage of professionals who pass our examination is around 62%, higher than some programs pass rates and lower than others. Our goal is to offer a challenging and credible program.

We have never hidden the fact that we are a private organization and not a government body. The reason professional translators complete our program is because we offer valuable career coaching, video training modules, expert translator interviews, and other resources that have practical application and use. If government-ran programs were doing a great job at this already nobody would join our program but we have new members joining our program every week because that is not the case.

If you do not want to complete our certification program that is 100% fine with us - we are not trying to sell this program to everyone...as mentioned within our last post no single program is going to be right for everyone in the industry...and many translators may have no need for a professional certification program of any type.

You questions are now more argumentative than constructive or informational. We have answered your questions already and if you prefer another program over ours you are welcome to complete their program, but we are not going to get dragged down into arguments over your opinion of what you would like to see within a certification program offered by our team. We constantly add more resources to our program and will continue to offer the most credible, practical, and challenging program we can.

Best of luck within your own career.

- Adriana
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Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 06:51
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
How to make a programme credible Sep 1, 2010

CTP wrote:
You questions are now more argumentative than constructive or informational. We have answered your questions already and if you prefer another program over ours you are welcome to complete their program, but we are not going to get dragged down into arguments over your opinion of what you would like to see within a certification program offered by our team. We constantly add more resources to our program and will continue to offer the most credible, practical, and challenging program we can.

I understand that Adriana, but I am also sure that you understand that a "certification programme" offered by a for-profit corporation is prone to raise suspicion: people will always believe that you are intentionally pass bad (insufficiently prepared) translators as good ones because you want to propagate the programme and sell the courses and the exam. I believe my questions to be completely pertinent, since --at least in my opinion-- only a government body or an open, regulated professional association is capable of giving credible certificates, and for a very simple reason: they don't need to pass anyone and will mark all bad exams as fails, no matter if not a single person passes every year.

To five you an example, there are just 400 English-Spanish ATA-certified translators in the whole world, and every year only about a dozen pass the exam, despite the fact that there are many thousands of English-Spanish translators in the US only. If they passed 62% of all candidates and scrapped the eligibility requirements, the certification would be worth peanuts.

If you want to make your programme credible, the only way is to make it really strict and be very careful about who you pass. You can hardly evaluate the quality and capability of a translator with a 300-word translation done over email. You cannot make a programme credible just by advertising it. Your goal is that any translator having your "certification" is capable of producing professional results time after time. If your customers can do that, your programme will thrive in due time. On the other hand, if you give bad translators a "certificate", the programme cannot succeed since end customers will talk about their experience much faster than you can advertise your programme. That's just how the market works!


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 06:51
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
AND, not OR Sep 1, 2010

CTP wrote:
Tomas - you asked whether we were a government body or legally organized within our country to be in business. We are formed as a United States LLC and are legally operating here under their regulations. There is no intent to mislead or pretend that we are associated with a government body of any type.

Just to make this straight, let's go back to my question:
Tomas wrote:
1. Are you a government body regulating official translations in your country or in any country, and duly incorporated and regulated by law?

My question was not just about whether you were legally organised --I naturally assume that you are-- but whether you were a government body AND duly incorporated as such. You understood "OR", when that was not my question. So that makes the answer to my question a No. No, you are not a government body. OK, I admit it: my question could be unclear if read too quickly, but is clear enough if read carefully.


 
CTP
CTP
United States
Low Passing Rate Sep 1, 2010

Tomas,

I believe some confusion is caused by the assumption that we want to replace or directly compete with the ATA.

We are not trying to copy their model, we are not trying to certify the same number of professionals per language and country, and we are not saying that our certification means the exact same thing that holding an ATA membership does.

One example is ongoing ATA membership dues. Perhaps someone who earns ATA status and then builds their
... See more
Tomas,

I believe some confusion is caused by the assumption that we want to replace or directly compete with the ATA.

We are not trying to copy their model, we are not trying to certify the same number of professionals per language and country, and we are not saying that our certification means the exact same thing that holding an ATA membership does.

One example is ongoing ATA membership dues. Perhaps someone who earns ATA status and then builds their translation business into a $100k/year business will not want to pay $200+ a year for the rest of their life to keep using the ATA certified term...they may let that lapse and that lowers the total number of ATA certified translators.

Another example is in the difficulty of the examinations and translation requirements. While the ATA and CTP programs are both challenging the CTP program is more affordable and less challenging than the ATA and we don't deny those facts.

Our programs are very different.

We are not motivated to certify just anyone. If you look closely at our business model we make money when someone registers for our program. We are not motivated to make the test easy however for multiple reasons. A more challenging tests improves the credibility of our program, a harder examination helps us win over associations and translation associations that want to train their teams and members, and if someone fails they have to take a re-take fee in order to be tested again. So the case is actually the opposite, the harder we make the examination the better it is for almost everyone involved.

We just had a new member join the Certified Translation Professional (CTP) program this morning, and when we spoke with them they mentioned that they joined because of the practical training, reputation of the program, and ability to complete the program from their remote location while working full time. We are not and will never be "better" or here "instead of" the ATA, we are simply different - serving different needs in the industry. If nobody wanted this alternate option we would not have any members within our program.

- Adriana
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Robert Sette
Robert Sette  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 23:51
French to English
+ ...
How can you certify a translator without seeing how they actually translate? Jan 9, 2011

The subject line sums it up, IMHO. They seem to be testing you on whether you read 3 books. It is disingenuous, misleading and, dare I say, unethical, in my opinion, to say that you certify translators, when you don't do anything to test their translation abilities.

As many people have learned in life, you do frequently get what you pay for.

- Robert


 
Post removed: This post was hidden by a moderator or staff member because it was not in line with site rule
Michelangela
Michelangela
United States
Local time: 22:51
German to English
+ ...
Dichotomy Jul 29, 2011

Well, there seems to be 2 types of translators, based on the graduation criteria from an accredited school.

What to do (read in order to become certified / recognized) as professional translator specialized in a technical field, competitive in today's translation industry - for people like me and Yue Edwards, who earned their MSc and can produce high-quality translations in their respective fields (like Computer Science or Biotechnology), but didn't receive any translator degree?... See more
Well, there seems to be 2 types of translators, based on the graduation criteria from an accredited school.

What to do (read in order to become certified / recognized) as professional translator specialized in a technical field, competitive in today's translation industry - for people like me and Yue Edwards, who earned their MSc and can produce high-quality translations in their respective fields (like Computer Science or Biotechnology), but didn't receive any translator degree?

Again, the question is how to earn recognition and work in such case?



[Edited at 2011-07-29 23:11 GMT]
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Radovan Pletka
Radovan Pletka  Identity Verified
United States
Local time: 22:51
English to Czech
+ ...
This looks clearly as a scam Nov 27, 2011

There is now a long discussion at LinkedIn about this, one guy posted info about it as a reseller, and over 50 translators wrote that they want to do this. I would not have believed how gullable are some of our colleagues.

 
shereenseyam
shereenseyam
English to Arabic
I have never heard of it too Dec 20, 2011

I really searched a lot for an online translation certification, but have never found one. It seems that they are new, but this does not make them any less valuable. Everything starts new. The problem in this certification, as I checked their website (in my own point of view), is that they do not tell about the exam, what it is, what is the level, is it in groundwork translation or can it be in a specialized area and that part of benefits I cannot see them as real benefits getting audios and vid... See more
I really searched a lot for an online translation certification, but have never found one. It seems that they are new, but this does not make them any less valuable. Everything starts new. The problem in this certification, as I checked their website (in my own point of view), is that they do not tell about the exam, what it is, what is the level, is it in groundwork translation or can it be in a specialized area and that part of benefits I cannot see them as real benefits getting audios and videos of interviews with translators. I do not know, But I cannot see a lot of benefits, as I thought that the books of study would be in the field of translation not in the industry.Collapse


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 06:51
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
Online obsession Dec 20, 2011

shereenseyam wrote:
I really searched a lot for an online translation certification, but have never found one. It seems that they are new, but this does not make them any less valuable. Everything starts new.

Yes, all things start, but you will probably agree with me that a private company is in no position to offer any kind of certification.

By definition, certifications are given by educational institutions such as universities, schools, and government bodies, or (as in the case of the American Translators Association or the Chartered Institute of Linguists) recognised non-profit professional bodies. The reason why their certification is a valid and valued one is that they do not need to give the certification and you must earn it. If you are not good enough, they don't lose anything by not giving the certification.

With a private company offering "certification", they must promote their programme in order to sell more courses and sets of documents, so they must have an aggressive marketing plan and will certainly have a very high pass rate or they will never be known. The high pass rate immediately means that the translators showing this "certification" are not good enough for professional work and therefore the "certification" programme is ultimately doomed.

Personally I do not understand this obsession with "online certification". However, you have numerous university programmes which help you get a recognised diploma or certification in translation, and they are mostly (or even fully) online.

As for certification via an exam (as with the ATA or the IOL mentioned above), you only need to be present on the day of the exam, and all paperwork is done by email and regular mail. In the case of the ATA, you can take the exam only in the Americas, but the IOL lets you take the exams at any British Council location, i.e. nearly everywhere.

Maybe the "certification" offered by this company is cheap and has a high pass rate but... will it help you get more recognition and more work? That is highly doubtful.


 
Tristan Jimenez
Tristan Jimenez  Identity Verified
France
Local time: 06:51
English to French
pass rate Jul 10, 2012

In 2010, according to Adriana, the pass rate of the CTP was 62 %.
Someone from CTI told me a few weeks ago - while I was investigating the program - that it was 80 %.
That's quite of a huge change, translators are obviously getting better at it !!
Weird..


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 06:51
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
The Global Translation Institute according to the European Commission Dec 29, 2012

An excerpt of "The Status of the Translation Profession in the European Union", a report from the European Commission in July 2012:
The Global Translation Institute1 is managed by Adriana Tassini from an
office in Portland, Oregon (although it seems not to be registered with the
Portland Revenue Bureau, which does not list it at the address given). It
sponsors a Certified Translation Professional (CTP) Designation Program2,
managed by Adriana Tassini with a telephone number in Massachusetts. It
links to free information on the translation industry and how to become a
translator3, all of which comprises some 40 short online articles by Adriana
Tassini. Adriana Tassini describes herself as a “Harvard University Alumni
Member with a background in international relations and translation work
in São Paulo, Brazil and Boston, Massachusetts (USA)”. She names no
completed degrees. Her declared training team comprises 12 people, none
of them with any formal training in translation. To become a Certified
Translation Professional, you pay US$227 per language pair, study the
learning materials (none of which is language-specific) and sit the online
exam. It is not clear to what extent the exam tests language skills, but the
programme offers certification in 22 language pairs, of which the training
faculty are presented as being experts in five.


[Edited at 2012-12-29 20:14 GMT]


 
Silvia Fernandez
Silvia Fernandez  Identity Verified
Local time: 01:51
Member (2003)
Spanish to English
+ ...
But after all this discussion, what really is the benefit of being certified? Aug 22, 2013



[Edited at 2013-08-22 16:30 GMT]


 
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT
Tomás Cano Binder, BA, CT  Identity Verified
Spain
Local time: 06:51
Member (2005)
English to Spanish
+ ...
The benefit of being certified Aug 22, 2013

Clearly the benefit of being certified is showing your potential customers some proof that your work is genuinely professional.

As for the idea that the ATA's certification is designed so that only an elite can pass, I could not disagree more! You only need to make a good translation, as well as either having a degree in translation or another degree+experience, or proving five years of working experience to your customer's satisfaction. Is any of these things too much to ask? I wou
... See more
Clearly the benefit of being certified is showing your potential customers some proof that your work is genuinely professional.

As for the idea that the ATA's certification is designed so that only an elite can pass, I could not disagree more! You only need to make a good translation, as well as either having a degree in translation or another degree+experience, or proving five years of working experience to your customer's satisfaction. Is any of these things too much to ask? I would say that it is the very least a quality-conscious customer can expect from a professional.
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Has anyone heard of this school/institute? Global Translation Institute / (CTP Program)






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