Marking an idiom-heavy translation: structure right, sense wrong
The Tarjuma wa Alfaz section carries a 4-mark item: translate the following passage into English. «وقتی نامهٔ پذیرش به دستش رسید، مدت‌ها دو دل بود. سرانجام دل به دریا زد و شهرِ کوچک را ترک گفت. اما در شهرِ بزرگ ماه‌ها گذشت و کارش آب از آب تکان نمی‌خورد.»
Candidate M submits: 'When the letter of acceptance reached his hand, for a long time he was two hearts. At last he put his heart into the sea and left the small town. But in the big city months passed and his work did not move water from water.'
The scheme is split 2 marks for overall sense, 1 for idioms and fixed expressions, 1 for grammar and connectives. The moderator must decide the mark, defend it to a candidate who argues that every Persian word has been translated, and decide whether to teach idioms as a list or as a procedure.
1. Award a mark out of 4 and defend it against M's objection that 'every word is translated'.
Read the worked answer
Mark: 2/4. One for grammar and connectives (tenses, وقتی…, سرانجام, اما all handled correctly), one for overall sense, because the narrative shape - a decision, a move, a failure to progress - survives. Zero for idioms, because all three are mistranslated.
Answering the objection: 'every word translated' is precisely the error being penalised. The unit of translation is the meaning, and the three failures are units of meaning, not words:
- «دو دل بود» = he was in two minds / undecided - not 'two hearts'.
- «دل به دریا زد» = he took the plunge / plucked up courage - not 'put his heart into the sea'.
- «کارش آب از آب تکان نمی‌خورد» = nothing budged / he made no headway - not 'did not move water from water'.
Tell M the operational test: if the literal rendering is physically impossible or absurd in English ('he was two hearts'), the Persian is idiomatic and must be replaced by an English idiom of the same force. Partial credit is not available for a literal rendering, because the reader of the translation would not understand the situation.
2. Supply a full-mark rendering and explain the three decisions that earn the idiom mark.
Read the worked answer
Model rendering: 'When the letter of acceptance reached him, he was in two minds for a long time. In the end he took the plunge and left the small town. But months passed in the big city and his affairs made no headway at all.'
The three decisions:
- «دو دل» - the image is a heart split between two options. English encodes indecision as minds, not hearts. Translate the concept, not the body part.
- «دل به دریا زدن» - a courage idiom. Take the plunge matches both the courage and the irreversible commitment, and it happens to keep a water image, which is a bonus rather than a requirement.
- «آب از آب تکان نمی‌خورد» - literally 'water does not move from water', i.e. total stasis. Made no headway conveys the absence of progress; nothing budged is also acceptable.
Also credit the small repairs: 'reached his hand' → 'reached him' (the hand is idiomatic in Persian, redundant in English), and «کارش» → 'his affairs' rather than a narrow 'his work', since nothing in the passage says he found employment.
3. The passage never says what kind of 'کار' he was seeking. How should M handle «کارش» - and what does this show about translation procedure?
Read the worked answer
«کارش» here is best rendered as 'his affairs', 'his prospects' or 'things' rather than 'his work'. The passage tells us he moved to a big city after an acceptance letter and that nothing progressed; it does not specify a job. A translator who writes 'his work' invents a fact, which is a different fault from a mistranslation: it is over-specification.
The procedure to teach:
- Read the whole passage before writing anything, to establish the situation.
- Mark idioms and idioms-in-disguise (body parts, water, hand, heart) - these are the predictable loss points.
- For each, ask whether the literal English is usable; if not, choose a target idiom with the same force and register.
- Then check for over-specification: no English word should add information the Persian does not carry.
A list of idioms helps only if the student has already learned to spot them. The procedure - flag, test, replace - is what transfers to an unseen passage, and it is what separates a 2 from a 4 on this item.