Translation from Gujarati into English

What the official syllabus says

Paper 2: English (Main Examination), type of question 4:

TRANSLATION: Translation of a short passage (of about 150 words) from Gujarati to English. (Marks allotted: 20)

Topics in detail

Understanding the Gujarati passage

• Reading the whole passage for its sense and tone before translating.
• Marking Gujarati idioms (rudhiprayog), sayings (kahevat) and long sentences that need to be restructured.
• Kinds of passages to practise: news, government notices and appeals, passages on social and civic issues, and short descriptive or reflective passages.

Writing it in English

• Word order: Gujarati usually ends the sentence with the verb; English puts the verb after the subject.
• Tense and aspect: choosing the English tense that matches the Gujarati verb form, including the continuous and perfect tenses.
• Articles (a, an, the), which Gujarati does not have, and prepositions in place of Gujarati postpositions.
• Respect forms: the Gujarati plural of respect (for one person) becomes singular in English.
• Idioms and sayings: translating the meaning, using an English equivalent only where it fits exactly.
• Administrative terms: the standard English terms of government work (for example the terms for a notification, a resolution, a circular, a district collector, a taluka, a gram panchayat).
• Names, numbers, dates and units kept exact.
• Style: natural English that keeps the meaning, without word-for-word stiffness and without adding ideas.

Checking

• Comparing sentence by sentence that nothing is missing or added.
• Reading the English alone for grammar, articles, agreement and spelling.

Overlaps

The Gujarati paper has the reverse task, translation from English into Gujarati (two passages, 40 marks).