Idiom, Register, and the Five-Sentence Translation
The translation section asks candidates to translate five short Persian sentences into English. Each sentence is worth two marks: one for meaning, one for natural English. One sentence is «او برای این کار دست و پا کرد.» Another is «من به دیدن او چشم دارم.» The candidate has eight minutes. His pocket dictionary lists دست = hand, پا = foot, چشم = eye, but gives no idioms. He writes: ‘He made hand and foot for this work’ and ‘I have eye to seeing him.’ He knows the English is odd but believes literal translation is safer because it ‘does not add meaning.’ The instructions say: do not leave Persian words; use clear, formal English; translate the sense, not word for word. He has three more sentences to translate and is unsure whether to revise the two odd ones.
1. For «دست و پا کرد», choose between a literal and an idiomatic rendering. Explain how the two-mark split should guide the choice, and give a model translation.
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The literal rendering fails both halves of the mark scheme. ‘He made hand and foot for this work’ conveys no English meaning, so it loses the meaning mark, and it is not natural English, so it loses the second mark. The Persian expression means that someone tried very hard or went to great lengths. A model translation is ‘He went to great lengths for this task.’ That keeps the sense of strenuous effort and uses an established English idiom. A safer, simpler version is ‘He tried very hard to do this work.’ The candidate should treat the expression as a unit rather than looking up «دست» and «پا» separately. The dictionary is useful for content words, but idioms must be translated by their sense; otherwise the two-mark split punishes the literal answer twice.
2. For «چشم دارم», how does context decide between ‘expect’ and ‘hope/desire’? Give a defensible translation and note the ambiguity.
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«چشم داشتن» is an idiom of expectation or aspiration, not a statement about the physical eye. With «به دیدن او», the sense is that the speaker hopes or expects to see him. Context decides the shade: if the sentence suggested a firm arrangement, ‘I expect to see him’ would be possible; if it suggests a wish, ‘I hope to see him’ is better. The model translation should avoid overstating certainty: ‘I hope to see him.’ ‘I am looking forward to seeing him’ is also defensible if the register is friendly, but it adds a positive emotional colour that the Persian does not necessarily state. The candidate should note the ambiguity rather than pretend there is one exact equivalent. What he must not do is translate «چشم» as ‘eye’, because that loses the meaning mark and produces unnatural English.
3. Should he spend time revising the two odd sentences or finish the remaining three? Justify with marks and time.
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He should revise the two odd sentences briefly, then finish the remaining three. Each odd sentence currently risks earning zero or one mark: the literal versions are unlikely to receive the natural-English mark and may also miss the meaning mark. A quick idiom fix can move each sentence toward two marks, so the return on two or three minutes is high. But he must cap the revision. If he spends all eight minutes polishing two sentences, he leaves three sentences blank, losing up to six marks. The efficient plan is: fix «دست و پا کرد» and «چشم دارم» with simple, clear renderings, then translate the remaining three with attention to the meaning mark first and naturalness second. Blank answers guarantee zero; a plain but accurate translation can still earn partial or full credit.