GCSE Spanish: Translation into English

In the reformed GCSE in Spanish (first exams in 2026), the reading paper includes a translation from Spanish into English. In AQA's paper, for example, it is Section B, worth 10 marks, with sentences totalling at least 35 words at Foundation tier and 50 words at Higher tier. The task rewards a translation that renders the meaning of every part of the Spanish accurately and reads as natural English. Most lost marks come from a handful of structures that do not work word for word: the imperfect that means 'used to', gustar with the thing liked as its subject, the present tense with desde hace, ya no, impersonal se, and so on.

The quiz trains exactly those traps. Each of its twelve questions gives you one Spanish sentence and four English versions, and only one is accurate: you choose between 'I used to go' and 'I went', 'I have been living for two years' and 'I lived two years ago', 'no longer' and 'already', 'let me go out' and 'leave the house'. The Higher-tier questions add antes de + infinitive and the passive with ser. Every explanation names the structure, so you can recognise it in any sentence.

The flashcards put a short Spanish sentence on the front and its natural English translation, with the rule, on the back: desde hace, llevar + gerund, acabar de, ya no and todavía, the imperfect and the imperfect continuous, gustar, hay que and tener que, se puede, dejar + infinitive, idioms with tener and hacer, the passive with ser and with se, and lo que. The last card is a checklist for your own translations.

The written sheet contains eight original passages to translate: four at Foundation length (about 40 words) and four at Higher length (at least 50 words), on school, family, free time, holidays, healthy living, the environment, work experience and social media. The model answers give a complete English translation and list the points a marker checks, such as tenses, idioms and word order. Other accurate, natural translations are equally correct.

Work through the flashcards, take the quiz until every structure is familiar, then translate the passages in timed conditions and compare your version with the model, sentence by sentence.

• Translate Spanish passages of 35 to 50 words into accurate, natural English
• Render tenses correctly, including the imperfect for 'used to' and present + desde hace for 'have been -ing'
• Translate gustar, hay que, se puede and dejar + infinitive without word-for-word errors
• Recognise ya no, todavía, acabar de and other time expressions
• Translate Higher-tier structures: antes de + infinitive, the passive, lo que and cuando + subjunctive
• Check a translation for missing words, tense and person

Practice material written by Zestly, based on the DfE GCSE modern foreign languages subject content (2022), translation from Spanish into English and the Spanish grammar lists, and on the reading-paper translation as described, for example, in AQA's GCSE Spanish specification (8692, version 1.0). All passages are original.