5 Tips for the Translation Passages at GCSE

by Teri Fleetwood | May 14, 2026 | All posts

Translation from target language to English, and vice versa, is now a well-established part of the GCSE MFL syllabus. Interestingly this skill does not currently feature at IGCSE.

When revising, remember that the Reading Paper has the target-language translation into English, and the Writing Paper has the English to target-language translation.

Here are 5 tips to help you score well in these translation tasks:

· Read the WHOLE text before you start. Preferably twice. It is really common to rush straight in with the first sentence, but this can mean that you don’t have an understanding of the whole text, and this can lead you off onto a tangent, away from the real meaning.

· Annotate the text before you try to translate it. Highlight the tenses. There will be at least two, probably three different tenses. After you have finished check that you have used more than one tense (and that it is the right one in each case). If you have only one time frame, then you have missed something. Go back and check!

· Watch out for the little words that change the meaning. Things like “often”, “always”, “not”, “never”. Take particular care with words that are very similar but mean different things. One example which has tripped several students during practice this year is the German example “kein” vs “klein”. There is a big difference between “We have a small cinema” and “We have no cinema”.

· Take care over word order. Make sure that the word order you have in your final version is correct for the language you have translated into. For example, in French we would say “la table bleue” but we don’t say “the table blue” in English. In German, verbs often get sent to the end of the sentence, but this may not be the right way to do it in English.

· Proofread your work at the end. Check for any words which have crept in which are in the wrong language. Make sure your verb endings are correct. Have you translated each idea or concept, including the adjectives and adverbs?

I hope that these tips help with your translations. What advice would you give to another student?

Exam tips – Translation

by Teri Fleetwood | Feb 10, 2025 | All posts

The translation passages often seem quite daunting to students.  Especially at A-Level, I tend to find that students have been told to “translate every bit” but not necessarily been given concrete ideas about the process to follow to gain maximum marks.  These tips should help.

• Do take a bit of time to mark-up the source text before you even start to translate. You can write on the exam paper, as long as you don’t write in the margin. 

What to look for:

• With the A-Level translation into the target language, double-check whether key vocabulary was included in a previous question on the paper.  As an example, if the translation is marked as question number 9.9 on the exam, there is a high likelihood that the source text for questions 9.1-9.8 will contain relevant material.

• Tenses – there will be a variety of tenses used both at GCSE and A-Level. At A-Level expect the tense to change regularly, even within the same sentence.  Consider whether you would use the same tense in the translated language, or a different one.

• Verb endings.  If the text is in your target language, then use the verb endings to help you work out who is doing what.  If you are translating from English then double-check that you have used the correct endings.  Remember that some concepts may be singular in English and plural in the target language, or vice versa. Examples include “le pantalon” (trousers), “la majorité” (the majority) and “les devoirs” (homework) for French.

• Adjectives – if you are translating into the target language, don’t forget to think about the ending needed on the adjective – Gender of the noun? Plural? Which case? (for German)

• Relative clauses – these make the sentence more interesting to read, and a little trickier to translate. E.g. The protesters who attended the recent demonstrations are expected to appear on Sunday as well.

• Which phrases need to be translated differently in the second language to the first?  One example of this is in the phrase “I have been living in London for three years”.  This is a past continuous tense in English, but both German and French would use the present tense (with “seit” and “depuis” respectively). A second example would be the idea that we put the phrase “ago” after a time phrase in English, but before it in both French and German.

• Have you covered all the little words which add key details?  Words like rather, but, also, however, although, quite, almost etc do also need to be translated.  They should not be left out.

• If you find it difficult to work out which translated parts go where in the new sentence, it may be helpful to colour-code different chunks of the text.  For example, you could use two different colours, alternating, to show which ideas need to go together. This can be particularly useful when working out the adjective endings needed, or whether the verb should be single or plural.

Proof-read your work!  If you have any time left at the end of the exam at all, then please make time to proof-read your translation.  Check the verb endings, adjective agreements etc, but also check that it makes sense in the final version. If we wouldn’t need “the” or “a” in the English, then don’t use it!  In other words, make sure you follow the grammar rules of the language that you are writing in, not the rules of the language you are translating from.