Regulations of the ABRATES Accreditation Program

Objective

With the aim of giving recognition to and ensuring a high standard of quality among its associates, ABRATES implemented an accreditation program in 2001 that formally recognizes the professional competence of its associates in the translation of one specific language to another. Accreditation is granted to candidates who pass an examination that is applied under controlled conditions. Accreditation is available for professionals who are ABRATES associates, for combinations of language pairs in accordance with the published program.

Benefits of accreditation

Accreditation gives objective proof of the translator's professional competence for demonstration to clients and colleagues. Accredited translators can refer to their accreditation in their curriculum vitae, business cards, home pages and other promotional materials, but always indicating the specific combinations of languages.

Eligibility

All associates who, one month before the data of the test, are up to date with their subscriptions to ABRATES.

Validity

Accreditation has a validity of up to 10 years. If the candidate's affiliation is terminated within this period, the accreditation is automatically cancelled.  

Accreditation and Examining Committee

An Examining Committee will be nominated, formed by professionals who are eminent in their specific fields of activity and who may or may not be translators.

Enrollments

Enrollments for the tests must be made no less than 15 days before the respective date. The annual timetable for the accreditation tests will be published by ABRATES with the advance notice needed. Enrollment will only become effective upon payment of a fee of R$ 200.00 per language pair, which is intended to cover all the administrative expenses related to the application of the tests.

Tests

For a specific language pair, the test will last for three hours and thirty minutes and will consist of five texts of approximately 300 words each, on the following specific fields:

From foreign language to Portuguese:

• General, Medical/Scientific, Technical, Legal/Commercial and Literature.  

From Portuguese to foreign language:

• General, Medical/Scientific, Technical, Legal/Commercial and Journalism. 

Candidates should select just three texts to translate, which will be evaluated by the Examining Committee. The tests will be completed by pen, and the use of pencils will not be allowed. Nor will any electronic means of text processing be permitted. During the test, the candidate may consult as many dictionaries as deemed necessary, provided that these have been taken to the test location by the candidate himself or herself. Consultation of other candidates' dictionaries, or of computers and other electronic devices, will not be allowed. Nor will the use of mobile phones or other electronic communication devices be permitted.

Marking of the test papers

The test papers will be numbered, without any indication of the candidate's identity, and will be distributed to the examiners responsible for the respective texts, for their evaluation. Each translated text will receive from the examiners the grading of "Satisfactory" or "Unsatisfactory", in accordance with the marking criteria defined below.

Candidates who receive the grading of "Satisfactory" in all three texts will be considered to have "Passed". Candidates who receive the grading of "Satisfactory" in only one of the texts or in none of the texts will be considered to have "Failed". If a candidate receives the grading of "Satisfactory" in just two of the texts, this test paper will be sent to the President of the Committee to be settled, and the President's assessment ("Passed" or "Failed") will be considered final.

Test marking criteria

The tests will be marked by observing their general adequacy and the errors of Translation, Portuguese and Terminology.

Each text in each test will be deemed to be "Unsatisfactory" if it includes:

• two or more basic errors, or
• one basic error and more than three complementary errors, or 
• no basic errors and six or more complementary errors.

The text will be deemed to be "Satisfactory" if the number of errors is less than the above limits.

Examples of basic errors:

Translation errors:

• Failure to translate a substantial part of the text, titles or phrases
• Failure to understand words, phrases or the grammatical construction of the original text, with consequent error in translation
• Excessively literal translation, in cases where this is not required

Terminology errors:

• Error in the choice of translation for a term, due to lack of technical knowledge of the subject

Grammar errors:

• Spelling errors
• Errors of concordance and regimen
• Crass errors of punctuation

Examples of complementary errors:

• Utilization of a degree of formality/register in the translation that differs from what was utilized in the original text
• Addition of text that was not clearly included in the original, in cases where this is not necessary for conveying the original idea
• Minor errors of spelling and punctuation

Results

Candidates will only be informed of the final result, without any comment by the examiners. The test papers will not be returned to the candidates.

Review of the test result

Publication of the results

The results will be published through the official communication media of ABRATES, and will be available to candidates at the main office of ABRATES within a period of six weeks, counted from the date of the examination.

Accreditation Certificate

ABRATES will issue an Accreditation Certificate in the name of each of the candidates who passed in the examination.