Reading Comprehension Part C: English-to-Chinese Translation
Part C is worth 10 points and asks for English-to-Chinese translation: in English 1, five underlined sentences embedded in a passage; in English 2, a short paragraph. Marking rewards accurate comprehension plus acceptable Chinese, so a faithful but unreadable version and a fluent but inaccurate version both lose marks.
Parse before you translate
- Find the main subject, verb and object across modifiers and appositives.
- Identify relative and non-finite clauses, then decide whether each becomes a Chinese attributive with 的 or a separate clause.
- Note negation, comparison, modality (may, must, should) and tense (has been, would have done).
- Locate the logical connectors; they tell you whether to keep or reverse clause order in Chinese.
Restructure into Chinese
- Split long English attributes into short Chinese clauses: 'a policy that was designed to reduce emissions and that has been criticized by industry' → 这项政策旨在减少排放，但受到业界批评.
- Convert passive to active where Chinese prefers it: 'It is widely believed that...' → 人们普遍认为……
- Turn nominalizations into verbs: 'the improvement of living standards' → 生活水平提高.
- Replace pronouns with nouns when the Chinese sentence would otherwise be ambiguous.
Worked example
'The extent to which such findings can be generalized to other populations remains a matter of debate among researchers.' Literal: 这些发现能够被推广到其他人群的程度仍然是研究者中争论的事情。 Acceptable: 这些发现能在多大程度上推广到其他人群，研究者仍有争议。 Reasoning: 'the extent to which' asks about degree, best rendered 在多大程度上; 'remains a matter of debate' becomes 仍有争议; the dummy subject turns into a clause, and 'among researchers' becomes the topic.
Traps that cost marks
- Dropping a negative or a comparative such as fewer than or not unlike.
- Translating every 'of' as 的, producing unreadable modifier chains.
- Missing counterfactual tense: 'would have done' is not a simple past.
- Leaving 被-passives where Chinese would use a topic-comment structure.
- Rendering a technical term differently in each of the five sentences.
- Adding interpretation that the English does not contain.