Translation, literalness, accuracy, and idiom

Since I know some of you are a bit concerned about producing acceptable translations for the next assignment and the exams, in a post tomorrow I will clarify what I mean by translation, literalness, accuracy, and idiom.

But for the moment the big issue is accuracy: if you accurately represent in English what the Latin is saying, and don't leave out any words that you absolutely don't have to, you will be fine. Accuracy is the fundamental, underlying issue that affects all the others. If you get the person of a verb wrong, then that word is inaccurately translated. If you get a noun's case wrong, you will probably have translated it incorrectly. Worry more about knowing your morphology and vocabulary than any abstract ideas of idiom and style.