How to prepare best for my arabic test I need for my job as a translator

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Hi all. I have an Arabic exam for work soon. I am a native German speaker and I studied Arabic at university. My question is how I can prepare best for my exam? I think I have to translate a text- Most likely from Arabic to German. But I can use a dictionary so it is a matter of how quick I can work. And of course I have to figure out the grammar and I have to know enough words of course. My Arabic is pretty good but if they are mean of course they could give me a very difficult text. I have to admit that I didn´t do much for Arabic in the last time as I have other things to do. And as the exam is in about two week I don´t have much time to get much exposure and of course I can read some texts and learn new words. I can have an easy time to use an online dictionary. But the thing is no matter how much exposure I will get. I think I can´t get enough exposure anyway in a limited time and I don´t know whether I learn the right words. So should I just simulate an exam with a stopwatch and a good old dictionary and just work on a relevant text? Or should I just guess which terms are most likely the most important ones and just learn them in a list? These words are most likely words related to politics, security or terrorism, terrorism and islamism. I also have texts I already worked on with some translated words. But again, there are just random words even they might be important. Thank you in advance for you tips.

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Hi Mohamed84,

That’s a real “challenge”:

  • Are there older written exam texts that you can use for your translation exercises (using a stopwatch)? If possible, then try to translate a lot of the previous exam texts.
  • If you have to translate “non fiction” texts, it might help to read as many journalistic texts in your subject area (politics, economics, tech, whatever) as possible, We did this at university in French as well…
  • Re tools: Why not train with ChatGPT? See: How Can You Use ChatGPT To Learn Arabic? | Arabic For Nerds
  • And I’d probably use Anki decks (the most frequent XYZ words in Arabic), too.
    Good luck,
    Peter
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you Peter Thank

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