Literal Words, Lost Proverb: Marking an Idiomatic Translation
In a Class 10 translation practice, 30 students must render the proverb «رُبَّ رَمْيَةٍ مِنْ غَيْرِ رَامٍ» into Hindi and English and add a one-line explanation. Three drafts are submitted. Draft 1: «Many arrows were shot without a shooter.» Draft 2: «Sometimes a shot reaches the target without an archer.» Draft 3: «An unskilled person may succeed by chance.» The marking scheme allots 2 marks for meaning, 1 for natural style, and 1 for the explanation. A student argues that Draft 1 deserves full meaning marks because it keeps every Arabic word: رُبَّ = many, رمية = shot, من غير = without, رام = shooter. The teacher has to decide whether literal completeness or pragmatic equivalence is being tested.
1. Rank the three drafts for meaning and explain the key translation decision.
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Ranking for meaning: Draft 3 > Draft 2 > Draft 1.
- Draft 3 captures the proverb’s pragmatic point: success by chance or without the expected skill. It does not pretend that the Arabic is a statistical report about arrows.
- Draft 2 is close: it keeps the shooting image and “without an archer”, but “reaches the target” adds information not explicit in «من غير رام». It is acceptable as a literary rendering but slightly over-specifies.
- Draft 1 is the weakest in meaning. «رُبَّ» does not mean a countable “many” here; it introduces a proverbial frequency/possibility (“many a time”, “often”). Rendering it as “many arrows were shot” turns an observation about lucky success into a claim about a large number of shots.
The key decision: the exam is testing pragmatic equivalence, not word-count equivalence. Literal completeness that destroys the proverb’s function should not receive full meaning marks.
2. What should the one-line explanation say, and why is that line necessary for full marks?
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A strong explanation: «The proverb comments on a lucky success achieved without the expected skill; it warns against relying on accident.»
It is necessary because the translation alone can be read as praise of incompetence. The proverb’s force is usually cautionary or descriptive: an unskilled person may occasionally hit the mark, but that does not make the person skilled. The explanation earns its mark by showing that the student understands the speech function of the proverb, not only its dictionary words. It also protects against a rendering such as Draft 2 being read as a literal archery report.
3. Give a natural Hindi rendering and state what it gains or loses compared with the Arabic.
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A natural Hindi rendering: «कभी-कभी भाग्य से भी सफलता मिल जाती है।» A more image-based option is: «बिना निशानेबाज के भी कभी निशाना लग जाता है।»
- The first gains idiomatic clarity for a Hindi reader and preserves the cautionary idea, but it loses the concrete image of the arrow and archer.
- The second keeps the image and is closer in style, but it may sound slightly literal unless the explanation supplies the proverb’s point.
Best exam answer: give the idiomatic Hindi, then add one clause noting the lost image. That shows control of both meaning and style, which is exactly what the 2+1+1 marking scheme rewards.