I have recently decided, after a long reflection, to quit the French Ministry of Education where I was teaching English and to become a full-time translator. I had some experience, but not quite recent. Moreover, my studies were not in the field of translation, and I am not certified.
I started collecting information on my "future" new job and found several articles against tests for clients or agencies. I fully understand their point of view, it is true that it is a work you are not being paid for and that your qualities as a translator shouldn't be questioned as you are a professional.
But it took me quite some time, as a beginner, to get a first job. I did pro-bono translations, but all my bids for paid jobs were left unanswered... Until I was offered to take a test for a job. After what I had read, I wasn't sure whether I should accept, but I took time to reflect. I thought about how large the community of freelance translators is, about the fact that I might lack experience compared to other bidders, that I desperately needed a first paid job to become part of this community. It also came to me that a test could be part of the investment related to the establishment of any new business.
Moreover, in France, there is no official certification needed to settle oneself as a translator. So it might be seen as legitimate to ask a French translator an example of his/her qualities. I didn't have any sample of translation in the required field to submit instead of taking a test.
For all these reasons, I decided to accept the test, and I eventually got the job. And I think I will keep taking tests as long as my corpus of samples is not wide enough, and as long as my experience isn't significant enough for potential clients to rely on it without question.
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