Is the ETOE™ exam replacing the CHI™ oral certification exams or future language-specific exams?

No! CCHI recognizes that the most effective and direct way to evaluate interpreting skills is through a bilingual oral performance exam like the CHI exams, which test all interpreting modes. However, creating and maintaining such exams is very resource-intensive, as it requires a certain number of pilot test takers, subject matter experts, and qualified raters of a specific language to be continuously available. For many languages, this is currently unfeasible. That’s why CCHI explored how the same skills could be evaluated in a different way by conducting the EtoE Interpreter Testing Study in 2020, where interpreters took a monolingual ETOE exam and a bilingual CHI exam, and their results were compared. The study provided us with a scientific foundation for a new approach to evaluating interpreting skills. If you are interested in the details, please read the summary report here (it contains the link to the full report, too).

Therefore, the new monolingual ETOE exam is not intended as a replacement for bilingual exams. It is an opportunity to test the skills of interpreters of any language in a more efficient way, and it closes the gap for languages where performance certification has not been available until this moment. While we are excited to launch this universal skills-based exam, we will also continue to develop bilingual exams in the order that makes the most sense from a feasibility/sustainability standpoint. In fact, the ETOE exam may help point us in the right direction, as it will give us a clearer idea of which languages are most represented among U.S. interpreters who want a higher-tier certification.

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