Translation and Applied Writing: Urdu to English/Punjabi and summarising
This section tests transfer of meaning, not transfer of words. You may be asked to render an Urdu passage into English or Punjabi, and to write a khulasa (summary) of a given passage.
Translation rules that the marking follows
- Read the whole passage once before writing anything; tense and subject are decided by the passage, not the sentence.
- Keep the tense, person and number of the original unless the target language forces a change.
- Convert idioms by equivalent idiom, never word for word: 'aankh ka tara' becomes 'the apple of one's eye' in English and 'akkh da tara' in Punjabi.
- Transliterate proper nouns and keep official titles intact.
- Re-read your version as target-language prose; if it sounds translated, it usually is wrong.
Summarising
A khulasa keeps the main points, drops examples and repetition, is written in your own words, and runs to about one third of the original. No personal opinion, no new facts.
Worked example
Urdu: 'Woh apne walid ke farman-bardar tha aur un ki har baat mannta tha.' English: 'He was obedient to his father and accepted everything he said.' Reasoning: 'farman-bardar' is an idiomatic adjective, so 'obedient'; the past tense is retained in both clauses; 'har baat mannta tha' is rendered as habitual past, not 'he accepted' once.
Traps that cost marks
- Literal idiom renderings that make no sense in the target language.
- Leaving Urdu words untranslated in the middle of an English sentence.
- Shifting from past to present tense halfway through.
- Writing a summary that includes your own opinion or copies whole sentences.
- Writing a summary nearly as long as the original passage.