Hey everyone!

Today I have received the notice from EPSO that unfortunately I did not pass the MSQ test for Visual Communication Assistant, which had one of the lowest applicant numbers (around 300) I have seen.

My results were, as received, following:

Test (a) :   Verbal reasoning: 8.000 /20 (pass mark: 10/20)

Test (b) :   Numerical reasoning: 7.000 /10

Test (c) :   Abstract reasoning: 9.000 /10

Total for tests (b) and (c):   16.000 /20 (aggregate pass mark: 10/20)

1.QUESTION: Please, can someone explain me, how the pass mark functions - you have to obtain pass mark in every (a, b and c) test separately or the pass mark is calculated for the complete test? If it is calculated for the complete test (at least, so it is for sample tests they suggest), then I have more than 50% correct, which seemingly has to be enough to pass...

2.QUESTION: I have done an internship in Directorate for Translation this summer, so this one is a bit specific to explain, as I have professional experience in EU translations, which makes me ask this question.

I did the test in my mother tongue (small European language, less than 2 mio. people speak it). I have trained myself for Verbal reasoning test in English, though. However, I have noticed that some questions have had very abstract and contextually inaccurate translations with no testing principle in mind, that is, for example, 1) keywords were changed or even not used at all in answer texts, leaving no possibility for an applicant to locate the corresponding sentence in the paragraph effectively, and 2) some answers seemed to loose the context or some small details of the original texts resulting in that many answer options were identical with different word sequence (it did not seem intended, cause such problem appeared in more than a half of questions). 3) It seemed that translator(s) of my language felt too flexible trying to make the sentence look professional and yet accurate that they forgot about the purpose of these sentences and that such testing has to work on hints, thus, small details, which applicant has to work with. Trying to figure out translator interpretation of those rather extensive answer options took a lot of precious time. In other words, due to the inappropriate translation of verbal questions and its answer options, some answer options contained absolutely no hint or useful context in order for some questions to be answered correctly at all. I hope you understand what I mean by that all...

Next time I do EPSO MSQ tests I will definitely choose English for testing language. Is it possible for me as non-native English speaker to do so?

Concerning this, I would like to know, how is it possible to demand question neutralization in my mother tongue, or at least, ask for translation quality check-up?

Personally, I am feeling really let down by my language translators in EP. I have done my internship in this department last summer and I have noticed that translators there sometimes tend to lose some context of source language sentence in order to make it stylistically more appropriate and "good looking" in the target language.

Would be very happy about any suggestions, thoughts or ideas on this!