Marathi Honorifics in an Ardhamagadhi Frame
A 5-mark Marathi-to-Ardhamagadhi translation item reads: the Lord Mahavira gave the gift of fearlessness to all living beings, and said that non-violence is the greatest gift. The scheme allots 2 marks for case endings, 1 for verb forms, 1 for the reported-speech link and compound, 1 for fluency. Of forty-two scripts, thirty-three write savva pana with a bare stem and no dative ending, copying the Marathi plural shape directly; eighteen render 'gave' with a present-tense verb; nine leave 'non-violence is the greatest gift' as a loose second sentence with no quotative; and twenty-five transfer the Marathi honorific plural straight into a plural Prakrit verb for a single teacher. Two students translate accurately but reorder the clauses.
1. Identify the three decisions that actually carry the marks, and build the target sentence around them.
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Decision 1 - the dative plural. Marathi 'sarva pranyanna' is dative plural, so the target needs the plural dative ending -anam on pana, and savva must agree: savvesim pananam. 'Savva pana' is wrong twice - no ending and no agreement - and it is wrong because Marathi's bare plural was carried across untranslated.
Decision 2 - the verb. 'Gave' is past, so a past-tense finite form of the da- paradigm is required, agreeing with the subject. The present tense is not a stylistic variant here; it changes the sense.
Decision 3 - the reported clause. 'And said that...' needs the quotative iti or tti closing the reported clause before the verb of saying, and 'the gift of non-violence' is best handled as the compound ahimsadanam, or as a genitive phrase ahimsaya danam.
Skeleton: subject with title in apposition - savvesim pananam - object (abhayassa danam or abhayadanam) - past verb - quotative clause - iti - verb of saying. Every element above is a scheme mark; the exact word order is not.
2. Twenty-five students transfer the Marathi honorific plural into the Prakrit verb. Correct them without teaching a false rule.
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Explain what the honorific plural is doing in Marathi. 'Mahaviranni' is grammatically plural because Marathi uses plural morphology as a marker of respect for a single revered person. Prakrit does not perform respect that way in this construction: the title bhagava, and the apposition of the epithet, carry the register, while the verb stays singular, because a plural verb would signal several teachers. So the student has translated the morphology and lost the meaning.
Give the general principle rather than a list: translate the function, not the ending. Marathi honorific plural, Marathi 'ne' instrumental, and Marathi compound order are all surface habits that must be re-decided in the target language.
Marking: a plural verb here is a verb-form error, not a fluency error, and should be charged once. Do not double-charge the same mistake under fluency as well, which is how accurate scripts end up at 3/5.
3. Two scripts translate accurately but reorder clauses and choose different vocabulary. How do you mark them?
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Full marks on the grammatical heads, and full fluency marks if the result reads as Ardhamagadhi rather than as Marathi in Prakrit dress.
The test for fluency is not resemblance to the key. Ask three questions: do the case endings still mark the right relations after the reordering? does the verb still agree? is the quotative still attached to the right clause? If all three hold, the reordering is a legitimate translation choice, and penalising it teaches students that translation is transcription of the key.
Vocabulary: accept a genuine synonym from the prescribed word list; reject a word that shifts the doctrinal sense - for example rendering 'fearlessness' with a word meaning merely 'safety' weakens abhaya, which is a technical term in Jain usage. Record both accepted variants on the scheme so that the next marker does not re-litigate it.