ATA recently launched its second year of offering the certification exam online. 2021年,永利登录网址开始与ExamRoom合作.AI, an international remote testing platform, to allow candidates to take the exam from home. After some initial hiccups, this proved to be a successful and popular collaboration. In all, 150 candidates took the online exam, whereas fewer than 100 attended in-person sittings. 这两种情况, capacity bottlenecks forced us to turn away a number of people interested in becoming certified. The plan this year is to greatly expand the availability of the online exam, 这需要一些关键的改变.
去年,ATA安排了虚拟会议(例如.e., set times at which a limited number of candidates took the exam remotely). They were monitored by 监考 from ExamRoom—who provided technical support and also watched for obvious prohibited behavior, such as cell phone use or talking to someone off-camera—as well as ATA 监考, 谁监视未经授权的互联网使用.1
今年, candidates will do initial registration via ATA, selecting their language pair and making payment, and then be passed on to ExamRoom to schedule the exam at a time of the candidate’s choosing. This means that for the first time ever, candidates will be able to schedule their own exam sitting. 而且,几乎没有限制2 on the number of candidates who can take the exam.
The second key change is that instead of allowing candidates to access all of the internet apart from specifically prohibited sites (such as DeepL or sites with chat or forums), this year we’re flipping that around and allowing candidates to use only a long list of allowed resource sites. Everything else will be blocked automatically—and thus there’s no longer any need for ATA 监考 to monitor internet usage. (These two approaches to internet access used to be known by the implicitly racist terms “blacklist” and “whitelist.”)
新“容许名单”3 for 2022 has been carefully selected by 年级学生 with outside input. It includes monolingual English and non-English resources, 双语词典网站, 还有一些多语种网站. We believe this will be much less confusing for candidates, as they’ll know in advance and during the exam exactly which sites they can use. 这也会平衡人们的期望, as both 年级学生 and candidates can be confident that qualified candidates, by applying their knowledge and skills and using the allowed list of resources, can successfully address the challenges present in the exam.
除了按需在线考试, we’re still allowing local groups to organize in-person sittings. Be advised that candidates taking the in-person exam will also be limited to the same Allow List of internet resources as other candidates. 最后, all print resources continue to be permitted for both the online and in-person exam, and candidates are also free to use glossaries stored on their computer/laptop, as long as they aren’t contained within a computer-assisted translation program.
There are sure to be some additional sites that individuals would like to see on the Allow List. The 永利登录网址 Committee is open to suggestions,4 but it remains the final arbiter of what makes it onto the list. Before you send in a suggestion for an additional site, bear in mind that the exam is not a vocabulary drill, and that the passages are of general subject matter. Gone are the days when we had semi-technical texts that might have necessitated an array of specialized dictionaries. My advice to candidates regarding the Allow List is to consider the sites already permitted very carefully and focus on the ones that provide the most practical assistance. If there’s a site missing that you think should absolutely be permitted, 永利登录网址会考虑把它加入名单, 但任何变化都要到2023年才能生效.
Everyone in the 永利登录网址项目 is excited by this new prospect of unlimited access to the exam. Getting to this point has required a huge effort by current and former members of the 永利登录网址 Committee, 年级学生, 监考, and especially 永利登录网址项目 Manager Caron Bailey and the late Michèle Hansen, 2020年至2021年担任永利登录网址委员会主席. 向参与其中的每个人致敬!
笔记
- Besides live monitoring, all sessions are recorded for later review if necessary.
- Subject to grader capacity for processing completed exams.
- ATA Computerized Exam Online Resource List: What’s Permitted and What’s Not, tinyurl.com/ATAExam资源.
- 发送到 certification@mokmingsky.com.
大卫·斯蒂芬森,康涅狄格州 是ATA永利登录网址委员会的主席. An ATA-certified German>English, Dutch>English, and Croatian>English translator, he has been an independent translator for over 30 years, specializing in civil litigation and creative nonfiction. david@bullcitylang.com.