SLLC Preliminary common mistakes
SLLC Preliminary · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Translating a verb as if its tense were the same as the English tense that feels natural in context, e.g. rendering a Latin imperfect (portabat) as simple past 'carried' rather than 'was carrying/used to carry', or a pluperfect as simple past.
English narrative defaults to simple past, so candidates collapse Latin's aspectual distinctions (imperfect vs perfect) into one English tense and lose the durative/completed contrast the Latin signals.
What to do instead
Before writing English, label each verb's tense and aspect (present, imperfect, perfect, pluperfect, future, future perfect) and decide whether the Latin is durative, repeated, or completed; then choose an English form that preserves that distinction ('was carrying', 'kept carrying', 'had carried'). Drill by translating short Latin sentences and underlining the verb form first.
Treating every noun ending in -a as first declension feminine and every -us as second declension masculine, so that e.g. poeta is made feminine or a fourth-declension noun like manus is parsed as second declension.
Textbooks introduce -a/-us as the default patterns, and candidates pattern-match on the final letter instead of checking the full paradigm and dictionary entry (poeta, -ae m.; manus, -ūs f.).
What to do instead
Memorise the short list of first-declension masculine nouns (poeta, nauta, agricola, incola, scriba, auriga) and fourth-declension nouns (manus, domus, exercitus, senatus, impetus). When parsing, always confirm case and number against the whole paradigm and check gender in the vocabulary list, not the ending alone.
Assuming a Latin word has the same range of meaning as its closest English derivative: translating hostis as 'host', orator as 'orator only', or imperium as 'empire' in every context.
Candidates lean on English derivatives as a shortcut, but Latin semantic fields are wider or narrower: hostis means 'enemy', imperium means 'command/power' as well as 'empire'.
What to do instead
Learn each word with a short gloss range rather than a single English equivalent (hostis = enemy; imperium = command, power, military authority, empire). When a derivative-based gloss produces nonsense in context, test the other listed senses before committing.
Mistranslating common idioms literally: rendering quamquam or tamen as if they were the other, or translating 'nihil aliud quam' word by word as 'nothing other than' when 'nothing but' is meant; also missing impersonal and idiomatic constructions such as opus est, necesse est, licet, and the ablative absolute.
Idioms are learned as vocabulary items and are not derivable from word-by-word glossing; candidates translate the parts and produce English that is grammatically correct but semantically wrong.
What to do instead
Keep an idiom list organised by construction (impersonal verbs, ablative absolute, genitive of value, double dative) and practise recognising the whole pattern before translating. For each idiom, write one model English rendering and reuse it.
Producing a translation that is grammatically parseable but ignores case and agreement, e.g. making the subject of a passive verb the object, or attaching an adjective to the nearest noun rather than the noun it agrees with in case, number, and gender.
Latin's flexible word order tempts candidates to read left-to-right as English, so the first noun encountered is made the subject and agreement endings are not checked.
What to do instead
Parse before translating: for each clause, identify the finite verb, then find its nominative subject, then its objects and complements by case. Match every adjective to its noun by the three agreement features. Only then write English in natural order.
Leaving Latin words untranslated or half-translated in the English version, or writing a loose paraphrase that drops subordinate clauses, participles, and ablative absolutes entirely.
Under time pressure, candidates skip difficult constructions and hope the gist suffices; examiners mark for accuracy of every element, not gist.
What to do instead
Account for every Latin word: after drafting, do a word-by-word check-off against the Latin, confirming each noun, verb, participle, and connective appears in the English. Render participles as English clauses ('having done X', 'while doing X') and ablative absolutes as a separate clause.
Translating English into Latin with English word order and English tense choices, e.g. putting the verb first or last mechanically, or using the present tense for an English future-in-the-past, and forgetting that Latin has no article.
Candidates compose by substituting English words for Latin ones in the English sentence order, rather than building a Latin clause with Latin's case system and tense sequence.
What to do instead
Draft the Latin skeleton first: decide the main verb and its tense, then assign cases to the nouns by their grammatical roles, then add agreement and word order last. Practise by converting short English sentences into Latin skeletons (subject–object–verb with case labels) before writing full forms.
Using the wrong case after prepositions or in constructions: putting the accusative after in and sub when motion is not meant, using the ablative after ad or per, or forgetting that certain verbs take the dative or ablative rather than the accusative.
Preposition and verb case government is memorised piecemeal, and the in/sub 'motion vs location' rule is easily inverted under pressure.
What to do instead
Build a table of prepositions by case (accusative: ad, per, trans, ob, propter; ablative: ab, de, ex, cum, sine, pro, prae; both: in, sub, super, subter with motion vs rest). Pair each verb with its case in the vocabulary list (e.g. imperare + dat., uti + abl., meminisse + gen.).
Confusing similar-sounding historical figures and institutions: mixing the Gracchi, Marius and Sulla, or the First and Second Triumvirates; describing the Senate as a legislative body that passed laws by vote of the people; or dating the Republic's end to Caesar's assassination rather than to Actium/Octavian's settlement.
Survey courses compress a century of politics into a few names, and candidates rely on vague narrative memory rather than precise chronology and institutional roles.
What to do instead
Build a dated timeline with one line per key event (133 BC tribunate of Tiberius Gracchus; 82 BC Sulla dictator; 60 BC First Triumvirate; 44 BC Caesar killed; 31 BC Actium; 27 BC Augustus). For institutions, learn what each body actually did: Senate advised and controlled finance and foreign policy; popular assemblies elected magistrates and voted laws; consuls held imperium.
Reading a set author as a source of facts about the period without distinguishing genre and rhetorical purpose: treating Livy's early books as reliable history, taking Cicero's invective in the Catilinarians as neutral description, or reading Aeneas's journey in the Aeneid as geography.
Candidates meet these texts in translation and in history units, so they absorb the content without learning the conventions of epic, historiography, invective, and oratory.
What to do instead
For each set text, note author, date, genre, audience, and purpose before extracting content. Treat Livy's first books as legendary tradition, Cicero's speeches as advocacy, and the Aeneid as epic shaped by Augustan ideology. Quote the text to support claims rather than paraphrasing it as fact.