• In day-to-day communication, we use spoken language to achieve a specific purpose in real life situations. NAATI tests centre around dialogues in such situations. Some of them are: Medical, Legal, Public Service, Business and Services.
• As a CCL Test candidate, you are acting as the “interpreter” assisting communication between an English speaker and a Telugu speaker.
• The quality of interpreter-assisted communication is decided by “who and how” a message is expressed and to “whom and how” the message is conveyed.

• NAATI Tests do not test your grammar knowledge, but the candidates are expected to use correct sentence structures in both English and Telugu.
• Natural grammatical structures must however be followed i.e., agreement between the subject, tense and verb, and usage of the articles (a, an & the). Note in English, verbs are common for both feminine and masculine genders, but they are different in Telugu.

E.g.       Rosy ate an apple.      రోసీ ఆపిల్ తిన్నాది.

            Rodney ate an apple. రాడ్నీ ఆపిల్ తిన్నాడు.

Note that we did not translate the article “an” as it is unusual to say

రోసీ ఒక ఆపిల్ తిన్నాది or రాడ్నీ ఒక ఆపిల్ తిన్నాడు.

However, in the reverse direction, usage of articles is required in English:

రోసీ ఆపిల్ తిన్నాది must be translated as “Rosy ate an apple”.

రాడ్నీ ఆపిల్ తిన్నాడు must be translated as “Rodney ate an apple”.

నేను పుస్తకం వాపసు ఇచ్చాను must be translated as “I returned the book”.

రాజు కంప్యూటర్ కొన్నాడు must be translated as “Raju bought a computer”

• A simple English sentence has “subject-verb-object” in that order, where as a simple Telugu sentence has “subject-object-verb”. This is the fundamental difference between English and Telugu sentences.
• If you start interpreting an English sentence as you hear, you will end up with confusion. Therefore, you must hear a sentence completely to understand what is being said and then interpret it. This will help you understand how pieces of information are connected logically.
• Some of the sentences are purposely made long to assess your ability to hear and retain long sentences and reproduce them in the target language.

Ex.          John read the book Discovery of India during his flight to Delhi.

John read the book Discovery of India while he was travelling in the flight on his way to Delhi. 

A homonym can be a homophone or a homograph or both.

It is important to understand the context in which a word (homonym) is used and its intended meaning while interpreting. Wrong interpretation leads to major distortion in interpreting.

Homophones are words that, when pronounced, sound similar to other words, but have different spellings and meanings.

sight (My eye-sight is poor at night) and site (A site was chosen for our new house)

to (I want to go); too (I like it too) and two (One plus one equals two)

Homographs are words that are spelled the same but are different in meaning or pronunciation.

close (Our house is close to the bus stop), (We close the shop at 10pm)

lead (India is taking lead in environmental politics), (Lead is a heavy metal)

• The candidates must understand common idioms in both English and Telugu and interpret them with their equivalents in the target language.

If an idiom does not have an equivalent in the target language, use an expression that gives gist of that idiom, but never transliterate the original idiom.

Ex.          It is raining cats and dogs.

It is not to be translated as పిల్లులు కుక్కలు వార్షిస్తోంది.

It is కుంభ వృష్టి పడుతోంది or you can simply say

ఎక్కువగా/గట్టిగా వర్షం పడుతోంది.

Here are some common idioms:

• In conversations, some words affect grammar and give different perceptions. Telugu language generally lacks “neuter” gender. All nouns/pronouns except representing humans are addressed in the feminine form.

Example, a lion is not addressed as “he” nor a lioness as “she” as is common in English; but both are addressed as this (ఇది) or that (అది).

Ex. 1       My dog Tommy’s leg is broken. He needs to be operated.

(name suggest a male dog)

నా కుక్క టామీ కాలు విరిగింది. వాడికి ఆపరేషన్ చెయ్యాలి.

Here వాడికి is incorrect. You must say దానికి instead. 

Ex. 2       My cat Jill’s leg is broken. She needs to be operated.

(name suggest a female cat)

నా పిల్లి జిల్ కాలు విరిగింది. దానికి ఆపరేషన్ చెయ్యాలి.

Here దానికి is correct.  

• Plural addressing is routinely used to designate singular nouns as a form of respect. Therefore, the interpretation shall recognise the context and use appropriate form suitable for the context. This will help you in setting your communication style (formal/semi-formal/informal).

Ex.          A young baby or a child is usually addressed in Telugu as

వాడు/అతను or అది/ఆమె, but not as ఆయన/ఆవిడ/వారు.

While it is not incorrect to use, it sounds weird and unnatural.

• To express numbers, the candidates are expected to use the respective Telugu equivalents up to 10,000. The words lakh (లక్ష) for 100,000 and crore (కోటి) for 10,000,000 are however are not suitable within Australian context.
• When using numbers in Telugu, use of English numerals (e.g. thirty-six for ముఫైఆరు) will be penalised. If a number is provided in millions in English, it must be converted to lakhs or crores in Telugu and vice versa.

Ex1.        Price of this house is $500,000.

ఇంటి వెల ఐదు ఐదు లక్షల డాలర్లు (Not వందల వేల డాలర్లు). 

Ex2.      ఈ వ్యాపారం విలువ 10 కోట్లు (10,00,00,000).

            The value of this business is 100 million (100,000,000).

• Overall, candidates taking NAATI Tests shall respect formal addressing and language conventions. Accordingly, candidates should use appropriate Telugu equivalents where they exist. For example, బడి for “school”, అత్త for “aunt”, మామ for “uncle” అమ్మ for “mum”.

Importance of CCL Dialogue Introduction

• During the CCL Test, for each dialogue, the narrator introduces the parties in the dialogue, their location etc.,
• Listen to the description carefully, understand the context of the dialogue and the parties involved in the dialogue.

Ex1. This dialogue is a job interview between an English-speaking restaurant owner and a potential employee. They discuss the job requirements. The interview takes place at the restaurant.

Ex2. A father was invited to a school interview for a suspected child abuse incident. The father was reported by the son who claimed that the father hit him in the eye.

The dialogue introductions will help you to understand the environment and interpersonal factors, purpose of the forthcoming messages in the dialogue, and the kind of language/vocabulary that might me appropriate during the interpretation.

From Ex.1 the above you can understand that it is a job interview at a restaurant. You can therefore assess the kind of conversation that is likely to take place. You may also hear names, relations etc in the first one or two sections to understand whether each part is a male or a female.

Assessment criteria

• Your test interpretations are assessed based on 3 major criteria:

1. accuracy of translations
2. quality of language (both English and Telugu), and
3. quality of delivery

Accuracy of translations

• Accuracy of interpretation includes meaning transfer, tone and tenor, and register. They, in turn, dependant on sentence structures, grammar, correct choice of words/idioms and pronunciation.
• Complete message transfer into the target language preserving the content and intent of the source message is important.
• While interpreting, omission of parts of what was said, adding more to what was said, or misinterpreting what was said will impact accuracy.

Quality of language

Quality of language is a measure of the use of language for its style, vocabulary, sentence structure, grammar, pronunciation, clarity of expression and relevance to the source message.

Quality of delivery

Quality of delivery is a measure of how fluently the sentences are spoken, corrections made during rendition and hesitations white searching for words.