Unseen Translation Practice: Historical Narratives

You will not know every word

Here is the thing that changes how the unseen feels, and almost nobody is told it plainly. You are not expected to know every word in the passage. ⭐ The hard words are printed for you at the bottom of the paper, with their meanings. They are called glosses, and using them is not cheating, it is the exam working as designed. ⭐⭐ And the words that are NOT glossed are usually pinned down by the shape of the sentence, so even there you are rarely stuck. So the unseen is not a memory test that you either revised enough for or did not. It is a METHOD you can carry into any passage: read the whole sentence, find the verb, find who is doing it, and fit the rest. A single Greek sentence, to show the whole method has somewhere to go: ὁ στρατηγὸς τὸν ἄγγελον πρὸς τὴν νῆσον πέμπει (the general sends the messenger to the island). Four jobs, one verb, and nothing in it you cannot reach by working the endings. ⚠️ Carry one question through everything below: what is the verb, and who is doing it? Answer that and the sentence has already started to open.

The wrong way in, and the right way

Two students meet the same sentence. The difference is not how much Greek they know. It is where they start.

Mark what follows from the method

Tap the TWO statements that follow from starting with the verb rather than the first word.

• Once you have the verb and the subject, the rest of the words have a frame to fit into
• A word you do not know need not stop you, because it may be glossed or its job may be clear from its ending
• You should always translate the words in the exact order they are printed
• If you have not learned every word in the passage, there is no way to make progress

The word you do not know

You are translating and you reach a word you have never seen. What is the best first move?

• Check the glosses at the bottom of the paper, because hard words in the passage are printed there with their meanings
• Stop, since a sentence with an unknown word cannot be translated
• Leave the whole sentence blank and move to the next one
• Guess an English word that sounds a bit like it

Five words for reading a sentence

Five terms, each defined plainly. They are the language you will use to talk yourself through a sentence.

Match each word to the job it is doing

Two things a good reader does

Select the TWO statements that describe reading an unseen sentence well.

• Read the whole sentence to the end before writing, so you know where it is going
• Use the ending of each word to decide its job, rather than only its meaning
• Translate strictly in the printed order and never look ahead
• Ignore the glosses so you can prove you learned the words

The running order for any sentence

A sequence that gives even a frightening sentence a way in. Run it in this order, because it goes from the load-bearing parts to the details. ⭐ READ THE WHOLE SENTENCE FIRST. Do not translate yet. You are looking for where it ends and roughly what it is about. ⭐ FIND THE VERB. It is the action, and everything else hangs off it. In Greek it is often near the end, which is why you read to the end first. ⭐ FIND THE SUBJECT. Look for the word in the nominative case. That is who is doing the action, and it tells you the person of the verb as well. ⭐ PLACE THE OBJECT AND THE REST. A word in the accusative is often what the action is done to. A preposition tells you its phrase is about place or direction, and your list prints which case each preposition takes. ⭐ USE THE GLOSSES, AND THE STORY. Slot in the glossed words, and then read your English back. If it does not make sense as a piece of narrative, something has slipped, so look again. ⚠️ Two habits to drop. The first is starting to write before you have the verb. The second is treating an unknown word as a full stop, when it is usually glossed or reachable from its ending. And a relief: this paper tests the indicative mood only, and unknown words are glossed, so the range of what a sentence can do to you is genuinely small.

One sentence, worked in order

Take the running order and walk one sentence through it. ὁ στρατηγὸς τὸν ἄγγελον πρὸς τὴν νῆσον πέμπει. ⭐ READ IT ALL FIRST. Four words and a verb at the end. Do not translate yet. ⭐ THE VERB IS πέμπει (he sends). The ending tells you it is one person doing it, now. So somebody is sending somebody. ⭐ THE SUBJECT IS ὁ στρατηγὸς (the general). It is in the nominative, so it is the one doing the sending. And it is singular, which matches the verb. ⭐ THE OBJECT IS τὸν ἄγγελον (the messenger). The accusative ending marks it as the one being sent, not the one sending. Notice that you did not need the word order to tell you this; the ending did. ⭐ THE LAST PHRASE IS πρὸς τὴν νῆσον (to the island). The preposition πρός takes the accusative and points towards something, so this is where the messenger is being sent. Read back: the general sends the messenger to the island. It works as a piece of narrative, so you can trust it. ⚠️ And notice what you did NOT do. You did not panic that the verb came last, you did not translate in printed order, and you let the endings, not the positions, tell you who did what.

Order the moves for a hard sentence

Put these five moves into the order that turns a wall of Greek into a translation.

• Read the whole sentence to the end before writing anything
• Find the verb, the action the sentence is built on
• Find the subject in the nominative, the one doing the action
• Fit the object and the other phrases, using endings and prepositions
• Slot in the glossed words and read the English back to check it makes sense

Complete the reading method

When you meet an unseen sentence, do not translate word by word. First find the _____, the action the sentence is about. Then find the _____, the one performing the action, which the nominative case reveals. The person the action is done to is the _____, marked by the accusative case. If a word is one you do not know, remember that hard words are _____ for you on the paper. Even with no help, the _____ of a word shows the job it is doing. Last, read your English back and let the sense of the _____ confirm that it is right.

Build the advice

Assemble the one piece of advice you would give a friend before the unseen.

One form, two meanings

You are translating and you meet ἔλαβον, which can mean "I took" or "they took". How do you decide which to write?

• Look at the subject of the sentence, since it is the surrounding words, not the verb ending alone, that settle whether it is I or they
• Always choose "I took", because it is the first meaning listed
• Pick whichever sounds better in English
• Treat the word as impossible and leave it out

The unseen reading run

Five quick decisions on translating an unseen passage. Three lives.

Work a sentence through

Here is an unseen sentence: ὁ στρατηγὸς τὸ ναυτικὸν ἀπὸ τῆς νήσου ἄγει. The paper glosses ναυτικόν as "fleet". Work it through the method.

• You have read the whole sentence. What is your first move?
• You have the verb. Who is doing the leading?
• That leaves `τὸ ναυτικόν` and `ἀπὸ τῆς νήσου`. How do you finish?

Advise a nervous friend

A friend says they will fail the unseen translation because they have not learned enough vocabulary. Write them a short reply explaining the method that gets a translation out of an unseen passage.

• Explain that the hard words are glossed on the paper, so not knowing every word is expected
• Explain the running order: read the whole sentence, then find the verb, then the subject
• Explain how the ending of a word, and the nominative and accusative cases, show which word is doing what
• Explain what to do on reaching an unknown word, using the glosses and the sentence around it
• Finish with the last check, reading the English back to see it makes sense as a story