Rubric for Latin and Greek Undergraduate Translations at the 3000 Level
An A translation is extraordinary work that more than fulfills the requirements of the assignment. The translation demonstrates at least 90% of the time the student’s mastery of vocabulary, morphology, and syntax. In addition to capturing the nuances of the semantics, the student recognizes and construes idioms, particles, and subordinate phrases accurately at least 90% of the time. The translation also reflects the student’s understanding of the place of the text in the larger political, social-historical, and/or literary context of the ancient Mediterranean world.
A B translation is clearly above-average and more than meets the requirements of the assignment. The translation demonstrates at least 80% of the time the student’s mastery of vocabulary, morphology, and syntax. In addition to recognizing the possible varieties of semantics, the student also recognizes idioms, particles, and subordinate phrases and translates them correctly at least 80% of the time. The student must at all times maintain the sense of the passage, but the “B” translation may contain some gaps in vocabulary which would evidently be remedied quickly by recourse to a lexicon. The translation attempts to reflect the student’s understanding of the place of the text in the larger political, social-historical, and/or literary context of the ancient Mediterranean world.
A C translation is average work that solidly meets the requirements of the assignment. The student demonstrates basic knowledge of vocabulary, morphology, and syntax, and construes complete sentences that, while they may not accurately convey all of the nuances present in the original Latin and Greek, nevertheless are grammatical and syntactically complete. The student is only marginally aware of shifting semantics and idioms. Some technical mistakes may include but are not limited to: verbs translated according to person, number, and mood, but perhaps not tense or voice; nouns translated according to case and gender, but perhaps not number; the student may miss comparative and superlative adjectives or adverbs altogether.
A D translation is below average work that nevertheless demonstrates a serious attempt to fulfill the assignment and shows some promise but does not meet the requirements of the assignment. The translation may have one or several of the following identifiable weaknesses: vocabulary, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatics.
An F translation is substantially below average for the assignment. It is either incomplete or incomprehensible. It deviates substantially from the Latin or Greek so as to be unrecognizable. It adds or omits words from the original language so as to compensate for a lack of syntactic coherence.