Translation (Arabic to English/Marathi and vice versa)
Translation between Arabic and English/Marathi tests meaning, not word matching. The MSBSHSE paper may ask you to render a short Arabic sentence into English or Marathi, or an English/Marathi sentence into Arabic. Marks are lost for wrong tense, negation, number and gender, so read the whole sentence before writing.
Core rules
- Identify the verb, its doer and its object first; Arabic word order is often verb-first.
- Preserve tense and aspect: past, present, command, prohibition.
- Keep definiteness and idafa: كتابُ الطالبِ = the student's book.
- Make adjectives agree in gender, number and definiteness.
- Translate particles by function: لا الناهية = do not; لم = did not; لن = will not; قد = already/may.
- In Marathi, use natural word order and the correct honorific or gender.
Worked example
Arabic: لا تَتَكَلَّمْ بِصَوْتٍ عَالٍ فِي المَكْتَبَةِ. English: Do not speak in a loud voice in the library. Marathi: ग्रंथालयात मोठ्याने बोलू नका. Reasoning: لا is prohibitive, so the mudari' is majzum: تَتَكَلَّمْ. بِصَوْتٍ عالٍ is a prepositional phrase meaning 'in a loud voice'; في المكتبة means 'in the library'. The command is negative, so English uses 'Do not' and Marathi uses बोलू नका.
Traps
Translating لا as past 'did not'; ignoring the command; rendering idafa as 'the book of the student' every time; using a masculine verb with a feminine subject; translating مكتبة as 'office' (that is مكتب); leaving out punctuation and capitalisation in English.