Paris 4 translation

I've been thinking about how artificial the exercise of translating in class is, compared to real-life translating work - and exams are even more so. But I think it's as legitimate as any other exam; it's a test of what you can do in peculiar conditions, which is some guide to your abilities. For example, we don't let you use dictionaries in exams, whereas no translator would ever work without a dictionary. Exams are of course totally artificial, like experiments, but they're one of the ways we've come up with to evaluate what people can do. Unfortunately the capacity to do well in exams is only a partial indicator of real ability. Can you imagine someone saying, "I've discovered I have a real talent for doing well in exams, so I've decided to make exam-taking my career"? Maybe we'll talk more about this in class.