The Idiom That Went Blind
At a school in Ballia, Section D of the Class 10 English paper has a 5-mark Hindi-to-English translation passage and an 80-word paragraph. One sentence uses the idiom 'अंधों में काना राजा' about a boy who becomes class monitor because no better candidate is available. Pupil A writes, 'Among the blind, the one-eyed is king.' Pupil B writes, 'In the blind, the lame king.' Pupil C writes, 'A boy with one eye became king of blind people.' The paragraph task is 'Write a paragraph on "Discipline" in about 80 words.' Pupil A writes 45 accurate words; Pupil B writes 95 words with two repeated sentences and one sentence about the school canteen. The marking scheme for the paragraph gives 2 marks for content, 2 for expression and 1 for length. The teacher is new and asks how strictly to apply the word limit and how to treat the idiom.
1. State the policy for marking the idiom sentence and apply it to A, B and C.
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Policy: translation is marked for sense, not for word-for-word correspondence. An idiom should be rendered by an equivalent English idiom or by a plain explanation that preserves its function in the sentence.
A: full mark for the sentence. 'Among the blind, the one-eyed is king' is an established English equivalent; the small article difference does not affect sense.
B: 0. 'Lame' changes the image and the meaning, and the sentence is not intelligible as the proverb.
C: half mark. The literal rendering keeps the image but loses the idiomatic point; it shows comprehension of the words, not of the proverb's function. Apply the same half-mark rule to any literal rendering that is accurate but unidiomatic, and write the rule into the scheme.
2. Award the paragraph marks to A and B, explaining how the length mark interacts with content and expression.
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A: 4/5. Content 2 (relevant, accurate), expression 2 (clear), length 0 (45 words is barely half of 80). 'About 80' should be read as roughly 70–90; a script at 45 has not met the task.
B: 3/5. Content 1 (the repeated sentences add nothing and the canteen sentence is off-task), expression 1 (repetition weakens control), length 1 (within range).
Length is a separate mark, so it must not be used twice to reduce content or expression. Award it once and record the reason. Feedback should say that one relevant example explained fully is worth more than two repeated sentences, and that an off-task sentence costs content marks even when the word count is correct.
3. Explain to the class the difference between translating an idiom and paraphrasing it, using this sentence.
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Translating an idiom means finding an English expression that does the same work in the sentence: 'Among the blind, the one-eyed is king' keeps the proverb's irony and its point about limited choice. Paraphrasing means explaining the meaning in plain words: 'the boy was chosen only because nobody better was available.' Both can be correct in a translation task, provided the second fits the sentence grammatically.
What fails is word-for-word substitution that produces an image English does not use, such as 'lame king', or a literal sentence that turns a proverb into a strange event. The test is whether an English reader who has never seen the Hindi would understand the point without extra explanation.