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NAATI Translator Certification Complaint: Text too specialized/unreasonable?
Thread poster: Liska Fell
Liska Fell
Liska Fell
Australia
Local time: 03:38
Chinese to English
Aug 3, 2021

I'm wondering whether anybody else has ever sat a NAATI translation exam in which a text seemed unreasonably specialized, or in which the vocabulary/syntax was consistently and unusually obscure?

Has anyone ever made a complaint about the content of a NAATI test?

I recently sat the Chinese->English Certified Translator exam with NAATI. The text in question was an article on Chinese medicinal treatments for strained eyes. My concern was not with the subject matter of the... See more
I'm wondering whether anybody else has ever sat a NAATI translation exam in which a text seemed unreasonably specialized, or in which the vocabulary/syntax was consistently and unusually obscure?

Has anyone ever made a complaint about the content of a NAATI test?

I recently sat the Chinese->English Certified Translator exam with NAATI. The text in question was an article on Chinese medicinal treatments for strained eyes. My concern was not with the subject matter of the text but rather the vocabulary and syntax.

For those unfamiliar with Chinese, in Modern Chinese most words are made up of two Chinese characters--a bisyllabic compound. This text contained almost none of these, and the sentences were extremely terse to the point of not following any Chinese sentence structure I have come across in my seven years of studying Chinese. It was sort of like the Chinese equivalent of the English they use in newspaper headlines, but taken much further.

This initially led me to the conclusion that it was not Modern Chinese but a Classical Chinese text (which would have been completely inappropriate). However I have also studied Classical Chinese and could say with certainty that it didn't follow Classical Chinese grammar either. I'm not a native speaker so I can't identify what form of Chinese it was or where it might be used.

I haven't come across a text anything like this in the previous two Certified Translator exams I have sat. The kind of Chinese they were using was so unfamiliar that I am confident I will not pass.

Do I have the basis for a complaint here? Or am I just whinging? Does anyone else have experience with making a complaint based on the content of a NAATI test?

P.S. I know I could have selected the other two texts, but one of them contained a term so obscure it didn't turn up in my Oxford Chinese Dictionary or any others. I knew I couldn't translate it correctly, and it came up again and again. Being aware of how few mistakes NAATI lets you get away with, I figured I could at least give the other text a shot and maybe work out the meaning, despite its non-standard form. ▲ Collapse
 
Dylan J Hartmann
Dylan J Hartmann  Identity Verified
Australia
Member (2014)
Thai to English
+ ...

MODERATOR
Full of mistakes Aug 3, 2021

My exam also contained source typos and mistakes as well.
I was able to choose another text and ended up passing.
I didn't send an official complaint, but told the NAATI staff about the source mistakes as I was leaving the room and they said they'd let the examiners know.
I suppose it does mimic the reality of working in real life - for my language pair, source documents are rarely well-written.
Wishing you luck to pass on your third attempt.
Hopefully some Chinese... See more
My exam also contained source typos and mistakes as well.
I was able to choose another text and ended up passing.
I didn't send an official complaint, but told the NAATI staff about the source mistakes as I was leaving the room and they said they'd let the examiners know.
I suppose it does mimic the reality of working in real life - for my language pair, source documents are rarely well-written.
Wishing you luck to pass on your third attempt.
Hopefully some Chinese language practitioners get back to you about this.
Regards,
DJH ▲ Collapse
 
Frank Zou
Frank Zou  Identity Verified
China
Local time: 01:38
Member (2016)
Chinese to English
+ ...
Pround Aug 3, 2021

Probably it's because you didn't have the background knowledge. Traditional Chinese Medicine is extremely difficult. Even a native Chinese would have to think twice before he dives in such field.
P.s. you can download the WHO-compiled TCM glossary to have a glimpse of how deep this goes.

Agnes Fatrai
 


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NAATI Translator Certification Complaint: Text too specialized/unreasonable?






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