ATA Slavic Languages Division

Want to Be Certified?

ATA has established a certification program to enable individual translators to demonstrate that they meet professional standards. Translators who pass a written examination are certified by ATA in a specific language pair and direction (from or into English). ATA certification offers objective evidence to both translator and client that the translator possesses professional competence in a specific language combination.

Approximately 150 of our members are currently certified for translation into or out of Russian, Polish, Croatian, or Ukrainian - the four Slavic Languages for which ATA certification is available.

Follow these steps to register for an ATA certification exam:

1. Become an ATA member As a member of ATA you can also purchase practice tests, which provide a practical introduction to the nature of the exam and how the graders mark the test, as well as an indication of how you will do on the exam. Join ATA Online.
2. Satisfy the Eligibility Requirements You must provide proof of a combination of education and work experience in order to qualify to take the examination. Please click here for the Eligibility Form.
3. Register for an upcoming exam The certification examination is a three-hour, open-book, proctored exam in a specific language pair. Please click here for the Registration Form.

For information about the ATA practice test and exam, and the certification program in general, please see ATA Certification Information.

If your language pair is not represented within the ATA certification program, you are welcome to band together with others interested in establishing such a certification. Once a sufficient number of prospective certification candidates AND volunteers willing and qualified to create a grading infrastructure have been identified, ATA will assist in the establishment of certification. Please contact the SLD administrators and/or ATA headquarters for further information. A recent grassroots effort within the Slavic Languages Division to establish separate translation certifications for Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian into and from English managed to garner enough support (in terms of signatures and volunteer commitment) to establish a certification program into and out of Croatian. A similar effort among members working in Ukrainian has established testing for English into Ukrainian.

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