PAU Latin II (Balearic Islands / UIB) common mistakes
PAU Latin II (Balearic Islands / UIB) · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Translating the opening ablative absolute as if it were a main clause (e.g. rendering 'Urbe capta, milites cessere' as 'the city was captured, the soldiers withdrew' with two coordinate clauses), so the subordination the Latin marks morphologically disappears in the target language.
Candidates recognise the participle and the noun but do not check agreement and case together; because Catalan and Spanish often express the same idea with a coordinated verb, the literal word-order transfer feels natural and goes unnoticed during self-review.
What to do instead
Before writing the translation, bracket every participial group and label it: identify the participle's tense and voice, confirm the noun it agrees with is in the ablative, and decide explicitly which Catalan/Spanish device will carry it (a subordinate clause with 'quan/després que', a prepositional phrase with 'un cop/una vegada', or a gerund where idiomatic). Then check that the main verb of the Latin sentence is still the main verb of your version.
Leaving the case-function of a noun unresolved and guessing from word order, so that a dative of agent with a passive periphrastic ('mihi faciendum est') is translated as a subject or a possessive, and genitives dependent on adjectives are attached to the wrong head noun.
School habit encourages translating left to right and inferring syntax from position, which works often enough in simple narrative prose to reinforce the shortcut; the candidate then meets a passive periphrastic or a long hyperbaton and has no procedure to fall back on.
What to do instead
Adopt a fixed pre-translation routine: for each clause, list the finite verb first, then mark nominative(s) as subject candidates, then assign every remaining oblique case a named function (dative of agent, dative of possession, genitive of quality, ablative of means, etc.). Only after that routine, write the target-language sentence. Practise on ten short passive-periphrastic sentences per session until the dative-of-agent pattern is automatic.
Confusing the perfect passive participle with the future active participle or with a gerundive when the forms are close (e.g. 'moriturus' vs 'mortuus', 'faciendus' vs 'factus'), producing a translation with the wrong time reference or the wrong voice.
The three forms share a stem and are taught together in morphology tables, so recognition depends on the ending rather than on the stem; under exam time pressure candidates match the first familiar shape they see and do not re-parse.
What to do instead
Build a three-column recognition drill (-tus / -turus / -ndus) using verbs from the prescribed authors, and for each form state tense, voice and the construction it typically signals (ablative absolute, passive periphrastic, future participle in indirect statement). In the exam, circle the ending before deciding the meaning.
Flattening the historical present, the imperfect and the perfect into a single past tense in translation, so that background description and single completed events read identically in Catalan or Spanish.
Target-language narrative tolerates tense simplification, and candidates assume that as long as the meaning is roughly right the tense is a stylistic detail rather than a graded feature; they also lack a mental map of the Latin tense system's aspectual contrasts.
What to do instead
Learn the aspect contrast explicitly: imperfect as background, repeated or in-progress action; perfect as a single completed event; historical present as foregrounded vivid narration. When translating, choose deliberately between 'imperfet' and 'passat simple/perifràstic' and be ready to justify the choice in the commentary question.
Answering the literary-commentary question with plot summary and author biography instead of analysing structure, narrative technique and style, so the answer never mentions how the text works.
The text is familiar and the candidate has memorised content; summary is the easiest thing to produce under pressure, and many candidates have never been shown a model answer that separates 'what happens' from 'how it is told'.
What to do instead
Structure the answer in labelled parts: (1) locate the passage in the work and genre, in two sentences maximum; (2) structure, dividing the passage into its internal movements with line references; (3) technique, naming devices actually present (apostrophe, simile, rhetorical question, anaphora, hyperbaton, speech within narrative) with the Latin quoted; (4) effect on the reader and link to the genre's conventions. Rehearse on past prescribed passages until the four-part shape is automatic.
Identifying the genre or period of a text from its subject matter alone - calling any narrative with gods an epic, or any first-person poem an elegy - without checking metre, diction and typical motifs.
Genre labels are learned as thematic tags rather than as sets of formal conventions, and exam passages are often chosen precisely because they are atypical or mixed (e.g. epyllion, didactic epic, Menippean satire).
What to do instead
For each genre build a checklist of formal markers: metre (hexameter, elegiac couplet, iambic senarius, lyric metres), register and diction, typical addressee, typical length and structure, and stock motifs. Apply the checklist to unseen short passages and justify the label with at least two formal features, not with the plot.
Treating Roman institutions as timeless background - describing the Senate, the consulship or the tribunate as if they worked the same way in the Republic and the Principate, or dating a text by the author's birth rather than by the political and literary phase it belongs to.
Handbooks present institutions in a single summary chapter, and revision notes compress the Republic and the Empire into one timeline; candidates then reproduce a generic 'Rome' that does not fit the passage in front of them.
What to do instead
Keep a dated timeline with three columns: political events, institutional changes, literary production. For each author on the syllabus, note the phase (late Republic, Augustan, Julio-Claudian, Flavian, etc.) and one concrete way the political context surfaces in the work. When a passage mentions a magistrate or assembly, state which period's rules you are applying.
Translating a Latin word by its most frequent modern derivative (e.g. 'ratio' as 'reason' everywhere, 'virtus' as 'virtue', 'imperium' as 'empire') without checking which sense the context and construction require.
Etymology feels like a shortcut to meaning and is rewarded in vocabulary tests, so candidates over-trust it; polysemy is under-taught because word lists give one gloss per word.
What to do instead
For high-frequency polysemous words on the syllabus, keep a sense inventory with a Latin example for each sense and the construction that selects it ('ratio' + genitive = account of; 'imperium' as power vs territory). In translation, if the default gloss produces an odd sentence, stop and test the alternatives against the syntax before moving on.
Writing a translation that is grammatically defensible but unidiomatic in Catalan or Spanish - calquing Latin word order, keeping 'et' as an initial 'i' in every clause, leaving passive constructions where the target language prefers active, and misusing ser/estar or the pronominal verbs.
Candidates treat translation as one-to-one substitution and revise only for Latin accuracy, not for target-language quality; there is often no separate revision pass because time runs out on the parsing stage.
What to do instead
Reserve the last minutes of the translation section for a monolingual read-through: read only your Catalan or Spanish version, without the Latin, and fix anything that sounds translated. Keep a personal list of recurring interference errors (initial 'i', overuse of passive, possessive adjectives, pronoun placement) and check that list explicitly.
Scanning the hexameter line by counting syllables instead of resolving feet by quantity, so that a line with a resolved foot, a hiatus or a Greek name is mis-scanned and the resulting commentary on rhythm is wrong.
Quantity is taught early and then assumed; candidates rely on stress intuition from Catalan or Spanish, which is not quantitative, and rarely practise on lines containing proper names or spondees in the fifth foot.
What to do instead
Scan from the end: identify the final foot and the obligatory dactyl or spondee in the fifth foot, then work backwards marking each long syllable by nature (diphthong, long vowel, vowel before two consonants) or by position. Practise on lines with Greek proper names and on lines with a spondaic fifth foot, and always state the caesura's position when commenting on rhythm.