EPSO Translator common mistakes
EPSO Translator · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Rendering source-language idioms and institutional set phrases word-for-word into the target language, producing calques such as translating a metaphorical expression literally instead of finding its target-language equivalent.
Under time pressure, candidates process the source text locally, clause by clause, and grab the first dictionary sense of each word rather than reading the whole sentence for meaning first. Idioms are the first casualty because their literal sense is grammatically plausible but semantically wrong.
What to do instead
Before translating, read the entire source sentence and restate its meaning to yourself in one plain sentence, then translate that meaning. Build a personal glossary of recurring EU institutional terms and common idioms with their established target-language equivalents, and drill them until recall is automatic.
Shifting register or tone: translating a formal administrative text into colloquial target-language phrasing, or a promotional passage into stiff bureaucratic prose.
Candidates focus on lexical accuracy and grammar and treat register as a cosmetic afterthought. They also default to the register they are most fluent in, which is usually conversational.
What to do instead
Before drafting, identify the text type, audience and register and write a one-line note to yourself. After drafting, re-read the target text alone and flag any phrase that would look out of place in that publication, then rework it. Practise rewriting the same short passage in three registers.
Leaving source-language syntax intact in the target sentence, producing long pre-modified noun phrases, misplaced subordinate clauses, or a word order that is grammatical but unnatural in the target language.
Translation memory and working-memory limits push candidates to mirror the source structure, because restructuring a sentence requires holding its full meaning while rebuilding it. This is especially strong when source and target have different default clause orders.
What to do instead
Draft, then do a dedicated restructuring pass in which you cover the source text and edit the target only for naturalness. Split long sentences, move the main clause forward, and convert nominalisations into verbs where the target language prefers them. Practise sight translation aloud to train restructuring under time pressure.
Missing or mistranslating negation, scope words, quantifiers and modality, so that a permissive clause becomes mandatory or a partial condition becomes absolute.
Small function words carry large meaning and are visually easy to skip when skimming for content words. Scope errors compound when a negation applies to a whole clause in the source but is attached to a single word in the target.
What to do instead
Do a targeted proofreading pass that checks only negation, modal verbs and quantifiers against the source, sentence by sentence. For each modal, decide explicitly whether it expresses obligation, permission, possibility or prohibition, and choose the target-language verb that encodes exactly that.
Producing a fluent target text that quietly omits a clause, adds an explanatory phrase not present in the source, or smooths over a term the candidate did not understand.
Faced with an unfamiliar term or an ambiguous passage, candidates resolve the discomfort by writing around it. The result reads well, so it survives self-review, but it fails accuracy checks.
What to do instead
Adopt a rule: never delete or invent content. If a term is unknown, translate it at the level of generality you can defend and flag it for a later check. In proofreading, compare sentence counts and check every source clause has a target counterpart, reading source and target in parallel rather than target alone.
Misreading the source text's argument structure, so that a concession is taken as the main claim, an example is taken as a definition, or an author's reported view is attributed to the author.
Candidates read for vocabulary rather than for discourse structure, and miss contrast markers, hedges and attribution verbs that signal whose position is being expressed.
What to do instead
Before translating, map the passage: underline connectors, mark the main claim, and note who says what. Train source-language comprehension separately by summarising opinion pieces in three sentences, distinguishing the author's view from views reported or rebutted.
Choosing a target-language word on the basis of its most frequent sense without checking collocation and context, producing a translation that is dictionary-correct but wrong in combination.
Bilingual dictionaries list senses without warning which collocations are natural. Candidates under time pressure take the first listed equivalent and do not test it in the sentence.
What to do instead
For any key term, generate two or three candidate equivalents and select by collocation, checking which nouns or verbs it naturally combines with in the target language. Keep a log of false friends and collocation traps encountered in practice texts and review it before the exam.
Losing time on a single difficult sentence or term, then rushing the remainder and leaving whole passages unfinished or unproofread.
Perfectionism plus a fixed time limit: candidates cannot abandon a problem, and the cost is paid by later passages that are worth more marks than the single item being polished.
What to do instead
Set explicit time budgets per passage during practice and enforce them with a timer. If a term resists for more than a short fixed interval, insert a defensible provisional rendering, mark it, and move on. Reserve a fixed block at the end for proofreading and honour it.
In verbal reasoning, answering from prior knowledge or plausibility rather than from the passage, and treating statements as true because they sound reasonable.
The statements are designed to be plausible but unsupported, and candidates' world knowledge is a strong distractor. Speed pressure encourages pattern-matching to familiar topics instead of locating textual support.
What to do instead
For every statement, locate the exact sentence in the passage that would support or contradict it, and answer only from that sentence. Practise labelling each option as supported, contradicted, or not addressed, and refuse to answer until the label is assigned.
In numerical and abstract reasoning, setting up the calculation correctly but failing on unit conversion, percentage-change versus percentage-point confusion, or the direction of a ratio, and in abstract series, extrapolating from only the first two terms.
These items embed one deliberate trap in otherwise straightforward arithmetic, and candidates who are already time-stressed skip the sanity check that would catch it. Series items punish premature pattern recognition.
What to do instead
Write the units next to every number before calculating, and convert to a common unit first. After computing, check the answer against an order-of-magnitude estimate. For series, test the hypothesised rule against at least three consecutive terms before committing, and check whether the rule alternates or combines two operations.