Ten Marks of Translation: Where Fidelity Ends and Naturalness Begins
A ten-mark translation question in the Intermediate Arabic paper asks candidates to render five Arabic sentences into Hindi/Urdu and five Hindi/Urdu sentences into Arabic. One Arabic item reads: «لا يَنالُ العِلمَ إلا مَن صَبَرَ على مَشَقَّتِه، ولم يُضِعْ وقتَه في الجَدَلِ». Another reads: «ما أجملَ أن يَصدُقَ المرءُ في قولِه!». A candidate with a strong vocabulary produces: 'Ilm is not obtained except by one who is patient on its difficulty, and he did not waste his time in jidal.' The Hindi/Urdu is grammatical, but three content words are left untranslated and the restriction is placed at the end of the clause, so the emphasis disappears; in the second item the exclamatory force is flattened into a plain statement. In the reverse direction, for 'समय ही धन है' / 'وقت ہی دولت ہے', the candidate writes «الوقتُ مالٌ», which is grammatically sound but reads like a calque. The scheme gives one mark per sentence plus one mark for overall naturalness.
1. Mark the first Arabic sentence and justify partial credit, supplying model Hindi and Urdu renderings.
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Award: 1.5 out of 2 - full content mark, half of the naturalness credit.
Model Hindi: «ज्ञान उसी को मिलता है जो उसकी कठिनाई पर धैर्य रखे और अपना समय बहस-विवाद में न गँवाए।» Model Urdu: «علم صرف اُسی کو حاصل ہوتا ہے جو اُس کی مشقّت پر صبر کرے اور اپنا وقت بحث و جدل میں ضائع نہ کرے۔»
Reasoning the marker should record:
- The restriction must be fronted. Arabic «لا … إلا» is a limiting construction; Hindi/Urdu signals the same limitation with «उसी को / صرف اُسی کو». Putting the exception at the end neutralises the rhetoric, so this is a real loss, not a taste difference.
- Untranslated words are judged by the target language, not by the source. In Urdu, علم، صبر، جدل are fully naturalised vocabulary and cost nothing. In Hindi, इल्म and जिदल are not natural, while ज्ञान، धैर्य، बहस are - so the same script scores differently in the two languages. The examiner must apply the paper's language direction, not a single yardstick.
- The parallel verbs (صبر … لم يضِع) should stay parallel: «धैर्य रखे … न गँवाए». Excellent idiomatic choice for أضاع وقته is «समय गँवाना / وقت ضائع کرنا», better than a literal 'waste in dispute'.
Award 2/2 if the candidate also renders مَشَقَّة as «कठिनाई/مشقّت» and keeps the two clauses balanced.
2. The second sentence «ما أجملَ أن يَصدُقَ المرءُ في قولِه!» is rendered as a plain statement. What has been lost, and what should the answer sheet contain?
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What is lost: the construction is an exclamation of wonder - ما التعجبية + فعل التعجب - and its force is admiration, not information. A plain statement such as 'a person should be truthful in his speech' removes the emotion and therefore the greater part of the meaning.
Model Hindi: «कितना सुंदर है कि मनुष्य अपनी बात में सच्चा हो!» Model Urdu: «کیا خوب ہے کہ آدمی اپنی بات میں سچا ہو!»
Points the candidate must control:
- أن + المضارع المنصوب here is a nominalised clause acting as the subject of the exclamation; Hindi/Urdu needs «कि …» / «کہ …» to carry it, otherwise the sentence breaks.
- The adjective must be carried over as an evaluative («सुंदर / خوب») rather than dropped.
- An acceptable but weaker alternative is a nominal turn: «मनुष्य का अपनी बात में सच्चा होना कितना अच्छा है।» Accept it, but note in moderation that the verbal exclamation keeps the force better.
Marking guidance: award the content mark for any rendering that preserves admiration; award the naturalness share only if the exclamatory shape survives. A statement that merely reports the proposition has translated the words and lost the sentence.
3. For «الوقتُ مالٌ» as a rendering of 'time is money', how should the examiner distinguish an error from a stylistic choice?
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Ruling: not an error - a correct but unidiomatic rendering. Award the content mark; withhold the naturalness share if the paper is otherwise strong.
The distinction to apply consistently:
- Error = a fault in the Arabic itself: wrong case (الوقتُ must be marfu' as mubtada'), wrong agreement, wrong preposition, a broken إضافة. «الوقتُ مالٌ» has none of these; both nouns are marfu' and the nominal sentence is well formed.
- Stylistic choice = the Arabic is right but does not sound like something an Arabic speaker would say. Here the language already owns the idea: «الوقت من ذهب» or «الوقت كنزٌ» are the idiomatic equivalents, and a candidate who produces one of them shows real command.
How to teach it: present a three-tier ladder for such items - literal (الوقت مال), acceptable (الوقت ثروة), idiomatic (الوقت من ذهب). Ask students to supply the idiomatic rung for five proverbs they already know in Hindi/Urdu.
One caution for moderation: do not let the idiomatic rung become a memory test. If the candidate has never met «الوقت من ذهب», the literal version is still correct Arabic and must not be marked wrong; only the naturalness mark is at stake.