Translation (English–Chinese)
Translation (English–Chinese) is scored on two things: whether the Chinese says what the English said, and whether it reads like Chinese rather than a word-by-word transcript. A rendering that is faithful but ungrammatical, or fluent but inaccurate, loses marks on both halves of the rubric.
Parse before you write
Find the subject–verb–object core of each clause and bracket the modifiers. English packs information into prepositional phrases, participles, appositives, and relative clauses; Chinese prefers short clauses ordered by time and logic.
Restructure, don't transcribe
- Long attributive clauses: split into separate clauses. The proposal, which was submitted last year and which has been revised twice, was finally approved → 该提案于去年提交，经过两次修改，最终获得批准。
- Nominalisation → verb: the implementation of the policy → 实施该政策, unless brevity demands the noun form.
- Passive → active, or use 被/由/受到/得到 as the sense requires: He was criticized → 他受到了批评。
- Abstract subjects: The evidence suggests that… → 有证据表明……, not 证据建议……。
- Limit 的 chains: more than two 的 in a row signals a sentence that needs rewriting.
Terms and details
Keep proper nouns and technical terms consistent throughout, and use the established Chinese term rather than a descriptive paraphrase. Do not drop negation, hedges (may, tends to, arguably), or quantifiers - markers are awarded for them.
Worked example
The extent to which these findings can be generalised remains a matter of debate. Steps: (1) core - the extent … remains a matter of debate; (2) to which modifies extent, giving 在多大程度上; (3) remains a matter of debate is idiomatically 仍有争议, not 仍是争论的事情. Rendering: 这些发现能在多大程度上得到推广，仍存在争议。 Reasoning: the long subject becomes a clause, the copula is compressed, and generalised is rendered as 推广 rather than a literal 一般化 in this context.
Traps that cost marks
- Word-for-word order producing 的-heavy, unreadable Chinese.
- Misattached which/that: check what the relative pronoun refers to before translating.
- Missed comparatives and negatives: not uncommon, fewer than expected, rather than.
- Rendering more than as 更多 instead of 超过/不仅仅, depending on structure.
- Leaving a word untranslated or adding explanation absent from the source.