Interested in working as a translator for the EU? Here are some sample tests

The European Commission is one of the biggest employers of translators worldwide. The selection process involves the testing of general abilities such as verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning but also of translation skills.

There are 3 comprehension tests, in German, French and English that test a linguist’s ability to understand his or her source language(s) and 23 translation tests (one for every official language of the EU, each one consisting of approximately one page of text to be translated).

I could not find any proposed solution to the translation tests. Although obviously there is more than one correct translation, it would have been useful – in my opinion – to see what an accepted translation version looks like. In this way, I guess that even beginner translators would be able to assess the quality of their translation and spot some of the mistakes, such as attention to detail or accuracy. An accepted translation would also provide some insight on the terminology issues and maybe give the translators the opportunity to research some terminology in case they did not get it right.