ALTA NTP (Legal Specialty Certifications) study guide
ALTA NTP · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.
The ALTA National Translation Provider (NTP) exam is a translation-competence assessment associated with ALTA Language Services, a US-based company that provides interpreting, translation, training, and language testing. It is aimed at working or aspiring translators - freelance translators, bilingual staff who regularly handle translated documents, and candidates who want an external evaluation of how accurately and naturally they render a source text into a target language. An independent study platform, we are not affiliated with ALTA and do not administer or score the exam. One caveat must come first: when we retrieved the official NTP exam page on 31 October 2026, it returned a 404 "page does not exist" error, and the translation-testing index returned the same error. The ALTA NTP study guide has 4 sections and about 1,133 words.
01Source-Language Comprehension and Fidelity
Fidelity begins with accurate comprehension, not with word-for-word substitution. A candidate must parse the source sentence’s grammar, identify the propositional content, and then determine illocutionary force: is the utterance a statement, a request, a warning, or irony?
293 words, about 1 min02Target-Language Accuracy and Naturalness
Accuracy asks whether the target text means the same thing; naturalness asks whether it reads as though written for the target audience. A translation can be grammatically correct yet unidiomatic, and exam questions often exploit exactly that gap.
267 words, about 1 min03Terminology, Register, and Domain-Specific Conventions
Terminology work is concept-based. A candidate must identify the concept, not merely match a word to a dictionary entry, then choose the term that specialists in the target field would actually use.
291 words, about 1 min04Mechanics, Formatting, and Cultural Adaptation
Mechanics and formatting carry meaning. Candidates must control orthography, capitalization, punctuation, quotation conventions, number and date formats, units of measure, layout, and footnote placement according to the target locale and genre.
282 words, about 1 min