Translation (Tarjuma): Urdu to English and Kannada
What Tarjuma tests
The translation question asks for a short Urdu passage rendered into English or Kannada, and sometimes the reverse. Marks go for sense, grammar and natural word order, not for matching words one to one.
Core rules
- Translate by sentence, not by word. Read the whole sentence, find its verb, then rebuild it in the target language.
- Urdu places the verb last and uses postpositions after the noun (ghar mein, mez par); English needs a preposition before the noun (in the house, on the table). Kannada, like Urdu, is subject-object-verb, so the order transfers more easily.
- Urdu drops pronouns freely; English and Kannada usually require the subject to be stated.
- Keep tense. Raha hai forms are continuous, the simple present can be habitual, and tha with a ki-clause normally takes would in English reported speech.
- Render muhawara by an equivalent idiom, never literally: aankh ka tara is the apple of one's eye; daant beesi karna is to grin and bear it.
Worked example
Sentence: us ne kaha tha ki woh kal aayega.
Reasoning: the main verb is kaha tha (past perfect) and the ki-clause carries aayega, a future. English sequence of tenses shifts the reported future to would: he had said that he would come the next day. Keeping will come preserves the Urdu tense but breaks English reported speech. In Kannada the subject-object-verb frame survives and the quotative antha marks the reported clause.
Traps
- Carrying Urdu order into English and producing I to market went.
- Translating an idiom literally and producing nonsense.
- Leaving English loanwords untranslated in the Kannada version.
- Changing number or gender because the target language patterns differ.