SLTES Open case studies
SLTES Open · Put your knowledge to work in context.
SLTES Open is a translation and interpreting credential assessed through multiple-choice questions across six weighted domains: language proficiency and communication (25%), translation theory and practice (25%), consecutive and simultaneous interpreting (20%), cultural and contextual competence (10%), professional ethics and standards (10%), and technology and terminology management (10%). It suits working translators, interpreters entering the profession, bilingual staff who handle translation informally, and candidates preparing for agency or in-house language roles who want an independent check of their knowledge. The SLTES Open case studies are 5 cases and about 4,173 words.
1The oncology consultation: jargon, a protective daughter, and eight minutes left
You are called at short notice to interpret in an oncology consultation at a public hospital. The patient is a 68-year-old woman who has lived in the country for thirty years; she speaks the language fluently but in a rural variety and has limited literacy.
859 words, about 4 min2Relay through a pivot booth at 185 words per minute
You are in the Chinese booth at a three-day water-infrastructure summit in Geneva. The opening keynote is delivered in Japanese; a Japanese booth relays into English and you relay from that English into Chinese, because no Japanese–Chinese booth was budgeted.
800 words, about 4 min3A UK hand-hygiene poster, a Hausa audience, and a "verbatim" grant clause
An international NGO is launching a household hand-hygiene campaign with a single English master creative developed in the UK: a poster showing a mother and child at a white ceramic basin with a chrome tap, running water and liquid soap; the slogan "Clean Hands, Safe Lives", chosen because it alliterates; a caption explaining that hands must be washed "with soap and running water for 20 seconds"; and a line thanking the donor. The campaign runs in northern Nigeria in Hausa, with a second variant for urban Kano in Nigerian English.
890 words, about 4 min4A certified translation, a missing page, and a request to backdate
A small law firm instructs you to produce a certified English translation of a nine-page Spanish judgment, to be filed in support of a client's application. The filing deadline is 17:00 on Friday; it is Thursday afternoon.
841 words, about 4 min5Sixty thousand words, an inherited memory, and a termbase that is wrong
You are lead linguist on a six-working-day localisation of an ERP product from English into German: 60,000 words, 41,000 segments. The client supplies an 82,000-TU translation memory inherited from a vendor whose contract was terminated, and a termbase in which "tenant" carries two approved entries, "Mieter" and "Pächter".
783 words, about 4 min