Grammar and translation: Paper 1 Section A and Paper 2 Section A

Translate, then identify the units a points-based scheme would be marking. کارخانے کے مالک نے بتایا کہ اُس نے پچھلے سال دس نئے کارکن رکھے تھے۔ اگرچہ پیداوار بڑھ گئی، مگر اجرت میں اضافہ نہیں ہو سکا۔ مزدوروں کی یونین کا کہنا ہے کہ معاہدہ اُن سے پوچھے بغیر بدلا گیا۔

1. 01Sentence one: two ergatives and a pluperfect

   کارخانے کے مالک نے بتایا کہ اُس نے پچھلے سال دس نئے کارکن رکھے تھے۔ Both clauses are ergative: بتانا and رکھنا are transitive and both verbs are perfective, so نے appears twice. رکھے تھے is a pluperfect and it agrees with کارکن, masculine plural, because that object is unmarked. کارخانے is the oblique of کارخانہ before کے. English: The factory owner said that he had taken on ten new workers the previous year.

2. 02Sentence two: a concessive and a negated potential

   اگرچہ پیداوار بڑھ گئی، مگر اجرت میں اضافہ نہیں ہو سکا۔ اگرچہ … مگر is the although … yet pair, and English uses only one of the two — dropping the concession entirely is the classic loss here. بڑھ گئی is an intensive compound with جانا, feminine to agree with پیداوار. نہیں ہو سکا is a negated potential with سکنا: could not be, not merely was not. English: Although production increased, there could be no rise in wages.

3. 03Sentence three: attribution, a passive, and a negative participial phrase

   مزدوروں کی یونین کا کہنا ہے کہ معاہدہ اُن سے پوچھے بغیر بدلا گیا۔ مزدوروں is the oblique plural. کا کہنا ہے کہ is the attribution formula. پوچھے بغیر is without asking, built on the oblique perfective participle plus بغیر — a construction the grammar list names and one that English renders with a gerund. بدلا گیا is a perfective passive with no agent, which is exactly why the union's complaint is phrased that way. English: The workers' union says that the agreement was changed without their being asked.

4. 04Now mark your own version

   The scored units in this passage are roughly: the factory owner; said; had taken on; ten new workers; the previous year; although; production increased; there could be no rise in wages; the workers' union says; the agreement was changed; without their being asked. Eleven units in three sentences. Score your draft against that list and you will see immediately whether your losses are lexical, in which case read more, or structural, in which case drill the four constructions above.

Result: The factory owner said that he had taken on ten new workers the previous year. Although production increased, there could be no rise in wages. The workers' union says that the agreement was changed without their being asked.

Translate into Urdu, deciding the ergative and the object marking in every clause. 'The teacher called the girl and gave her the book. She read it in one evening and then returned it. Nobody had asked her to.'

1. 01Clause one: transitive, perfective, and a کو-marked animate object

   استاد نے لڑکی کو بلایا۔ بلانا is transitive and بلایا is perfective, so نے. The object لڑکی is animate and specific, so it must take کو — animate direct objects are regularly marked. And because the object is marked, the verb cannot agree with it: بلایا stays masculine singular. Writing بلائی here is the classic error and it is a whole mark.

2. 02Clause two: two objects, one marked and one not

   اور اُسے کتاب دی۔ دینا takes an indirect object with کو — here contracted to اُسے, the standard fusion of اُس کو — and a direct object without it. The unmarked direct object is کتاب, feminine, so the verb is دی. The subject is still the teacher under the same نے, which Urdu does not repeat across a coordinated clause. So one sentence contains both agreement outcomes, which is exactly why this pair is worth drilling together.

3. 03Clause three: an ergative with a bare pronoun object

   اُس نے اُسے ایک ہی شام میں پڑھ لیا اور پھر واپس کر دی۔ Careful here: اُسے is کو-marked, so پڑھ لیا stays masculine singular. In the second clause the object is understood as کتاب and is unmarked, so واپس کر دی is feminine. پڑھ لیا and کر دی are compound verbs — لینا marks the action as done for the subject's own benefit, دینا as done for another — and using them rather than bare پڑھا and کیا is precisely the AO3 range the grid is looking for.

4. 04Clause four: a negative with a causative and a pluperfect

   کسی نے اُس سے ایسا کرنے کو نہیں کہا تھا۔ کہنا is transitive and کہا تھا is a pluperfect, so کسی takes نے. The person told takes سے with کہنا, not کو — a verb-government pairing that must be learned with the verb. ایسا کرنے کو is the inflected infinitive as the content of the request. And نہیں sits immediately before the verb, as Urdu word order requires.

5. 05Run the two checks that catch this whole passage

   Check one, the ergative: is every perfective transitive marked with نے, and is no intransitive marked? Check two, agreement: for each ergative clause, is the object marked with کو, and if so is the verb in the default masculine singular? Two passes, thirty seconds each, and they catch the errors that cost most in this task.

Result: استاد نے لڑکی کو بلایا اور اُسے کتاب دی۔ اُس نے اُسے ایک ہی شام میں پڑھ لیا اور پھر واپس کر دی۔ کسی نے اُس سے ایسا کرنے کو نہیں کہا تھا۔

Translate into Urdu and justify each tense. 'By the time the survey was published, the ministry had already changed the rule. If the survey had appeared a year earlier, the change would probably not have happened. Officials say they will publish the next report on time.'

1. 01Sentence one: a time clause plus a pluperfect with a completive

   جب تک سروے شائع ہوا، وزارت قاعدہ پہلے ہی بدل چکی تھی۔ جب تک … is the by the time frame. شائع ہوا is intransitive perfective, so no نے. بدل چکی تھی is the completive چکنا inside a pluperfect — had already changed — and it is feminine because وزارت is feminine. Note that چکنا makes پہلے ہی slightly redundant, and keeping both is idiomatic rather than wrong: Urdu commonly doubles the marker of anteriority.

2. 02Sentence two: a past counterfactual, in the form Urdu actually uses

   اگر سروے ایک سال پہلے آ جاتا تو شاید یہ تبدیلی نہ ہوتی۔ The counterfactual is built on the bare imperfective participle in both halves — آ جاتا … نہ ہوتی — even though the English is a past perfect and a would have. آ جاتا is the intensive compound with جانا, and نہ rather than نہیں is the negator required in a subjunctive or counterfactual environment. شاید, perhaps, carries the probably. A candidate who writes اگر سروے آیا ہوتا has produced a legal but heavier variant; a candidate who writes a future here has produced an error.

3. 03Sentence three: attribution plus a plain future

   حکام کا کہنا ہے کہ وہ اگلی رپورٹ وقت پر شائع کریں گے۔ حکام is the Arabic-origin plural of حاکم, used in Urdu for officials, and it takes plural agreement. کریں گے is the plain future, masculine plural. There is no ergative anywhere in this sentence because nothing is perfective. And وقت پر, on time, uses پر where English uses on — a collocation worth memorising rather than deriving.

4. 04Check the negators as a separate pass

   Urdu chooses its negator by environment: نہیں in ordinary indicative clauses, نہ in subjunctives, counterfactuals, and after اگر and تاکہ, and مت in negative commands. This passage needed نہ in sentence two. Getting the negator wrong is a small error that a marker will always see, and checking all three in one pass takes ten seconds.

Result: جب تک سروے شائع ہوا، وزارت قاعدہ پہلے ہی بدل چکی تھی۔ اگر سروے ایک سال پہلے آ جاتا تو شاید یہ تبدیلی نہ ہوتی۔ حکام کا کہنا ہے کہ وہ اگلی رپورٹ وقت پر شائع کریں گے۔

Translate, and at each verb say which noun its ending proves it is bound to. حکومت نے نئی پالیسی کا اعلان کیا تھا، مگر اُس پر عمل درآمد کی رفتار سست رہی۔ صوبوں نے اپنے قواعد الگ بنائے، جن پر ماہرین نے تنقید کی ہے۔

1. 01First verb: کیا تھا, and what its masculine singular ending proves

   حکومت نے نئی پالیسی کا اعلان کیا تھا۔ حکومت is feminine, and if the verb agreed with the subject it would be کی تھی. It does not, because نے is present: this is an ergative clause, and the verb agrees with the unmarked object. The unmarked object is اعلان, masculine singular — پالیسی is inside a genitive phrase, پالیسی کا اعلان, and is therefore not the object. The ending is thus proof of the parse. English: The government had announced a new policy.

2. 02Second verb: رہی, feminine, and what it rules out

   مگر اُس پر عمل درآمد کی رفتار سست رہی۔ رہی is feminine singular. The candidates for its subject are عمل درآمد, masculine, and رفتار, feminine. The ending settles it: the subject is رفتار, the pace, and عمل درآمد is inside the genitive phrase عمل درآمد کی رفتار. English: but the pace of implementation remained slow.

3. 03Third verb: بنائے, and a plural object under an ergative

   صوبوں نے اپنے قواعد الگ بنائے۔ صوبوں is the oblique plural of صوبہ before نے. بنائے is masculine plural and agrees with the unmarked object قواعد, an Arabic-origin plural. اپنے is the reflexive possessive: their own, referring back to the subject, and translating it as a plain their loses the reflexivity. English: The provinces made their own rules separately.

4. 04Fourth verb: کی ہے, and a کو-free ergative with a feminine object

   جن پر ماہرین نے تنقید کی ہے۔ جن پر is the oblique relative with پر — on which. ماہرین نے is ergative. تنقید is feminine, unmarked, so the verb is کی ہے, a present perfect. English: which experts have criticised. Read back through the four verbs and notice that in every case the ending, not the word order, told you the structure — which is why agreement is a reading tool and not only a writing rule.

Result: The government had announced a new policy, but the pace of implementation remained slow. The provinces made their own rules separately, and experts have criticised them.

Translate into Urdu using the method above. 'Although the new law was passed in 2016, many people did not know about it. A survey published two years later found that fewer than half of those questioned had heard of it. Officials replied that information had been sent to every district, and that the fault lay with the way it had been distributed.'

1. 01Minutes one to three: decide the structure of every sentence

   Sentence one needs a concessive plus an agentless passive plus a negative past habitual. Sentence two needs a participial modifier (a survey published), a comparative quantity, a relative clause and a pluperfect. Sentence three needs reported speech with کہ, two more agentless passives and a nominalised manner phrase. Writing those six words in the margin — concessive, passive, negative past, participle, pluperfect, reported — is the whole planning stage, and it means you never stop mid-sentence to decide.

2. 02Sentence one: the concessive and the passive

   اگرچہ نیا قانون 2016 میں منظور کیا گیا، مگر بہت سے لوگوں کو اِس کا علم نہ تھا۔ اگرچہ … مگر is the pair. منظور کیا گیا is a perfective passive with no agent, masculine to agree with قانون. علم نہ تھا uses the dative construction — لوگوں کو … علم تھا, literally to the people there was knowledge — with the negator نہ, which is idiomatic in this frozen expression. لوگوں is the oblique plural before کو.

3. 03Sentence two: the participle, the comparative and the pluperfect

   دو سال بعد شائع ہونے والے ایک سروے سے معلوم ہوا کہ جن لوگوں سے سوال کیا گیا، اُن میں سے نصف سے بھی کم نے اِس کے بارے میں سنا تھا۔ شائع ہونے والے is a participial modifier in the oblique. سے معلوم ہوا, it emerged from, is the natural Urdu for a survey found. جن … اُن is the correlative relative and سوال کیا گیا inside it is another agentless passive. نصف سے بھی کم, fewer than half, uses سے for the comparison, and نے appears because سنا تھا is a transitive pluperfect.

4. 04Sentence three: reported speech and a nominalised manner phrase

   حکام نے جواب دیا کہ معلومات ہر ضلعے میں بھیجی گئی تھیں، اور یہ کہ خرابی تقسیم کے طریقے میں تھی۔ جواب دیا is ergative. معلومات is a feminine plural noun, so بھیجی گئی تھیں is a feminine plural pluperfect passive — four grammatical decisions in one verb, and all four are visible to a marker. تقسیم کے طریقے میں, in the manner of distribution, renders the English nominalisation with a genitive rather than a clause.

5. 05Minutes twenty-six to thirty: the four checks and the gap sweep

   Gender: قانون masculine, علم masculine, سروے masculine, معلومات feminine plural, خرابی feminine — check each dependent word. Oblique: لوگوں کو, ضلعے میں, طریقے میں, سال بعد. Ergative: present on سنا تھا, جواب دیا; absent everywhere the verb is passive or intransitive. Government: سے with معلوم ہوا and with the comparative, کو in the dative construction, میں with بھیجنا for a destination area. Then read once for sense and make sure nothing in the English is missing from the Urdu.

Result: اگرچہ نیا قانون 2016 میں منظور کیا گیا، مگر بہت سے لوگوں کو اِس کا علم نہ تھا۔ دو سال بعد شائع ہونے والے ایک سروے سے معلوم ہوا کہ جن لوگوں سے سوال کیا گیا، اُن میں سے نصف سے بھی کم نے اِس کے بارے میں سنا تھا۔ حکام نے جواب دیا کہ معلومات ہر ضلعے میں بھیجی گئی تھیں، اور یہ کہ خرابی تقسیم کے طریقے میں تھی۔