Part C translation: contrastive frames, passives and false friends
Part C gives a 150-word passage with underlined sentences and 15 minutes. One underlined sentence reads: 'It is not so much that the policy failed as that it was never given a chance to succeed.' Another reads: 'While the report acknowledges the gains, it warns that they may prove fragile.' Wu Ting drafts: (1) 与其说这项政策失败了，不如说它从来没有被给过成功的机会。 (2) 当报告承认这些收益时，它警告这些收益可能证明是脆弱的。 She is unsure how to handle 'not so much … as …', suspects 被给过 sounds un-Chinese, and has been taught that 'while' means 当……的时候. She has 12 minutes for four more sentences, and her habit is to polish the first one until it reads elegantly.
1. Evaluate draft (1) and revise it if necessary. What is the marking scheme actually rewarding here?
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The frame is right; the passive is the problem. 与其说……不如说…… correctly captures the English contrast, and it preserves the direction of the argument: the first clause rejects one explanation, the second supplies the real one.
The weakness is 被给过. Chinese strongly prefers an active, topic-comment or instrumental phrasing for this idea:
- 它从未获得过成功的机会。
- 从未有人给过它成功的机会。
被给过 is translationese: it keeps the English passive morphology at the cost of natural Chinese. Two smaller points: 从来没有 is colloquial where 从未 suits written register, and 成功的机会 should stay together rather than being split.
Marking is segmented by clause, so accuracy is banked clause by clause. Wu Ting should secure the second half (never given a chance) before beautifying the first - a polished opening with a mangled second clause scores no better overall and wastes the clock.
2. Diagnose draft (2) and rewrite it.
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Three distinct errors, all common in Part C:
Whilemisread as temporal. Here it is concessive: 尽管 / 虽然.当……的时候inverts the logic and loses the contrast entirely.provemisread as 'to demonstrate'. Before an adjective it is a linking verb: 被证明是 / 结果是 / 可能变得. Rendering it as 证明 turns the gains into the thing doing the proving.fragileflattened. 脆弱 is possible but 不稳固 / 难以持久 fits economic gains better in Chinese collocation.
Revised version: 尽管报告承认取得了这些进展，但它警告说，这些进展可能并不稳固。
Note the repetition fix: English uses the gains … they; Chinese tolerates repetition less comfortably, so 这些进展 may be varied or left implicit on second mention. Keep acknowledges as 承认 / 认可, and keep the hedges 可能 and 并不 - Part C rewards preserving modality, not just content.
3. How should she manage the remaining 12 minutes and four sentences?
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One pass, clause by clause, no polishing until the end.
- Segment first. Read the whole sentence, mark its clause boundaries with a pencil, then translate unit by unit. Skipping segmentation is what produces Chinese that trails off mid-sentence.
- Two to three minutes per sentence. Five sentences, two points each; spending six minutes on one earns at most two points and risks four.
- Write something for every sentence. An imperfect rendering of a hard structure (an inverted conditional, a long post-modifier) still earns partial credit; an empty line earns none.
- Final 60–90 seconds: read the Chinese only, aloud in the head, checking for missing negations, flipped contrasts and subject-verb mismatches. Do not reopen the English at this stage unless a clause is obviously broken.
Her specific risk is temperament, not knowledge: she treats the passage as a writing task. It is a fidelity task, and fidelity is checked clause by clause.