ALTA NTP (Legal Specialty Certifications) cheat sheet

Fidelity preserves propositional content, illocutionary force, and logical relations; stylistic changes are acceptable only when those three remain unchanged.

An ambiguous source segment can have one syntactic parse but multiple plausible senses; resolve it by co-text, domain convention, and author intent, and flag it when unresolved.

Presupposition is background information treated as given, while assertion is foregrounded content; preserve the presupposition unless target grammar makes retention impossible.

Scope rules: negation, quantifiers, modals, and adverbs can apply to different spans; not all X differs from all X not, and the target must preserve the intended scope.

Cohesion tracking maps pronouns, ellipsis, substitution, and conjunctions to their antecedents; make referents explicit when the target language cannot sustain the same chain.

False cognates require context verification: a familiar-looking target word may carry a different sense, so confirm the source meaning before transferring it.

Information-unit accounting checks that every number, name, condition, claim, and relation in the source appears in the target and that no new claim is introduced.

Metaphor decision rule: keep the source image when it is conventional and understandable in the target; otherwise use an equivalent target image and record the shift.

Naturalness requires target grammar, collocation, and information structure; copying source word order can produce grammatical text that native readers still reject.

Collocation rule: a synonym is not interchangeable if it fails the habitual verb-noun or adjective-noun pairing expected in the target domain.

Information structure arranges given and new information through word order, clefting, and stress; target naturalness may require reorganizing these patterns while preserving emphasis.

Tense and aspect are selected from discourse meaning, not source morphology; completion, duration, repetition, and temporal location guide the target form.

Voice selection follows target discourse preferences; preserve topic and agent focus rather than mirroring active or passive voice mechanically.

Sentence segmentation may split or merge source sentences when logical relations, emphasis, and cohesion remain intact and target punctuation conventions are respected.

Zero anaphora is acceptable when target grammar allows an omitted pronoun and the referent remains clear; unnecessary repetition can sound unnatural.

Register consistency keeps formality, technicality, and emotional tone uniform; accidental shifts between formal and casual language reduce credibility.

Term consistency rule: one source concept receives one target term throughout a document unless a documented context-specific variant is required.

Glossary precedence order: client-approved glossary first, then domain standard, then authoritative dictionary, then parallel texts; document any deviation for review.

Register dimensions include formality, technicality, emotive coloring, and archaism; a domain-appropriate translation matches all relevant dimensions, not only vocabulary level.

Acronym rule: expand an abbreviation at first use when target readers may not know it, retain the acronym afterward, and follow target punctuation conventions.

Obligation strength distinguishes shall, must, should, and may; legal and technical translations preserve the source level of requirement rather than substituting a looser modal.

Neologism options include loan translation, transliteration, borrowing, and descriptive paraphrase; choose by target convention, transparency, and reader acceptance.

Standardized nomenclature uses officially recognized names for substances, diseases, and devices; replace a brand name only when the source clearly uses a generic or standard term.

Domain phraseology includes conventional formulas, honorifics, and boilerplate; matching these patterns preserves the source professional register and signals field competence.

Punctuation conversion adapts quotation marks, commas, dashes, and spacing to target style; never alter punctuation inside code, placeholders, or legally fixed strings.

Date localization rewrites dates in the target locale order and separator convention; retain an unambiguous source format when legal precision or ambiguity requires it.

Unit conversion preserves significant figures and rounds only as target convention or source precision warrants; show the original value when exactness matters.

Placeholder protection keeps tags, variables, and inline codes unchanged; moving or translating them can break software, formatting, or cross-references.

Name transliteration follows established target-script conventions; retain the original spelling when a person or organization publicly uses that spelling.

Cultural reference adaptation replaces a source-culture item with a functional target equivalent only when comprehension or impact requires it; otherwise preserve the item and explain if needed.

Currency notation keeps the amount and currency code clear; convert only with a stated exchange rate and date, and avoid ambiguous symbols that differ across locales.

Title case convention capitalizes major words in English titles according to style guides; sentence-case languages and many locales capitalize only the first word and proper nouns.