Graduate students in departments other than Spanish and Portuguese who choose to take Spanish or Portuguese as one of their language requirements for the Ph.D. may sit for the translation examination that is administered once each semester.

These language translation examinations consist of the translation from Spanish to English, or from Portuguese to English, of two prose texts. One of these texts is expository (it is taken from an academic journal that entertains topics of general interest), and the other is literary. In this two-hour exam the student devotes one hour to each exercise. For students taking the Spanish translation exam, Spanish/English and Spanish-language dictionaries may be used; likewise, for students taking the Portuguese exam, Portuguese/English and Portuguese-language dictionaries are permitted. No other materials are allowed.