Fluency means speaking at a constant pace, without unwanted pauses. Do not sacrifice fluency for the sake of translation. If you don’t know the appropriate word in either of the languages, use the word as it is. Yes, use the word as it is in English or Hindi. This way you would ensure fluency is maintained.

Accuracy and completeness of interpretation are the next two most important factors. Mistakes in these top 3 factors – fluency, accuracy and completeness – have highest penalty. Hence ensure you do not make any mistakes or miss out any important aspects.

Keep practicing as much as you can with as many YouTube, SBS videos you can get hold of. Make sure you record your practice sessions, analyse them critically, identify areas of improvement and ensure mistakes aren’t repeated. Practicing in group or with a friend would help too.

Practice taking short notes rather than writing down the entire sentence. It is practically impossible to write every word while listening to the recording. So the focus should be on writing down short forms and key words and relying on your memory to connect the words to formulate a coherent sentence. Again, practice helps you here. Cm up w ur own shrt cts 🙂

Make sure you accurately translate the factual aspects of dialogues such a period (week, date, month, years), lists (list of documents), parts of the body (right/left leg or arm, back, head). Mistakes in this will lead to inaccuracy or incompleteness in interpretation. Hence get them right.

Identify the language which is your strongest suit. Make sure you maximise your score in this. For the other language, focus on minimising your mistakes. If your strength is Hindi to English translation, try to ensure that you make minimal mistakes, if not zero in these sentences. Use your “dialogue repeats" for your stronger language to avoid losing any marks.

Familiarise yourself with the common topics. This will ensure you are comfortable with the words associated with a topic. Remember that only about 30% words would be specific to that topic. Rest all will be common or generic words and are most likely to be present in almost all dialogues. Make sure you get these correct.

Don’t attempt to translate every word. Some words are too difficult to translate. For these, just use the English word in your translation. For example “Ticket" “Phone" “Internet" etc. Similarly some words can be skipped instead of being translated. For example the English phrase “I wonder". If you don't know the right translation, you are better off not translating to ensure that fluency remains intact.

Create your own word list in a spreadsheet and revise it often. Start reading at least 1-2 articles in your LOTE (eg. Hindi, Punjabi) everyday. Even watching Youtube/SBS videos helps. Keep adding new words to your word list everyday when you come across any uncommon words. Categorise them into topics if possible. Soon you will have a master list of words on various topics.