The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2023 - 44

CERTIFICATION FORUM By David Stephenson
The Knapp Review Three Years
On: Upward and Onward!
In early 2020, ATA's Board engaged Knapp & Associates International,
Inc., a firm specializing in certification and credentialing, to perform
a review of the Certification Program. Besides presenting an opinion
on " decoupling " (making ATA certification independent of ATA
membership)1
, Knapp also made more than 30 recommendations
for improving ATA's certification system. That July, ATA's Certification
Committee created a roadmap for implementing those recommendations
(or, as the case may be, rejecting them), and this has been a major focus
of the committee ever since. The following is a summary of what's been
decided and done in the intervening three years.
A
number of
recommendations
from the Knapp
review have been
implemented in full:
y Identify the Certification
Committee on the
certification page
of ATA's website:
Implemented in 2020.
y Include an Americans
with Disabilities
Act accommodation
statement in printed
literature for all
candidates: This was
already in place at the time
of the Knapp review.
y Create a more definitive
statement describing
the level of performance
targeted by the
credential-entry level,
mid-level, or advanced-
and communicate
this definitive
statement effectively
to the community: This
statement was created in
2021-2022 and published
in the July/August 2022
issue of The ATA Chronicle.2
y Review current exam
appeals policy and
reconsider having the
grader who reviewed the
exam previously serve
on the appeal panel: A
new appeal panel structure
that doesn't include the
reviewer took effect in 2023.
y Periodically reevaluate
and update procedures
and criteria for selecting
graders: This review
and update was performed
in 2021.
y Identify three to five
high-level strategic goals
for the Certification
Program over the next
three to five years: The
following goals were
identified in May 2023:
creating an online grading
portal, offering the practice
test online, improving
grader consistency,
devising demographic
profiles of passing/failing
candidates through a new
association management
system, and attracting
a larger percentage of
qualified candidates.
44 The ATA Chronicle | September/October 2023
Work on several
recommendations is still
in progress:
y Provide candidates with
more information about
their exam performance:
A task force is working on
a feedback matrix intended
to automatically convert
exam markings into plainlanguage
performance
descriptions based on error
categories and point scores.
y Include a description of
what certification means
for potential users of
translation services in
ATA's online language
services directory: The
Certification Committee
plans to work with
the Public Relations
Committee to supplement
the client-facing content
on ATA's website with
pertinent information
about certification.
y Institute a formal
periodic review process
for reviewing the grading
work of all graders in all
language combinations:
The Certification
Committee is devising
policies and procedures for
performing routine audits
of grader performance.
The Certification Committee
has also rejected several of
Knapp's recommendations.
These deserve a more detailed
explanation.
y Evaluate whether the
pass rate truly reflects
the competency level of
the larger population of
professional translators
and interpreters: The
Certification Committee
believes that determining
the competency level of
the larger population of
professional translators
and interpreters is not
possible without an
unreasonable investment
of time and resources and
may in fact be impossible.
Although the U.S.
government's Interagency
Language Roundtable
(ILR) has developed skill
level descriptions3
for
translation performance,
there is no standardized
test or measurement for
translation quality in the
population of translators
as a whole. Nor are there
any statistics or data on
the larger population
that are publicly available
from other sources, such
as translation agencies or
clients. ATA doesn't have
the resources to assemble
such data itself, especially
since the translation
industry encompasses
many languages that are
not ATA-certifiable.
y Develop a formal
and comprehensive
communication strategy:
This is beyond the scope of
the Certification Program,
although we do maintain
www.atanet.org
http://www.atanet.org
The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2023

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The ATA Chronicle - September/October 2023
