Marcelo González Dec 9, 2018:

@Charles - agreed It's not in current use. I'd say it's used here in a sort of quasi non-technical sense in that it does not refer to a currently-used descriptor. In this context, I equate 'borderline' to 'threshold' (a term whose use at least dates back decades to the efforts of the Council of Europe), which here refers to the minimum score required to be considered as having reached the C1 level. In this type of text, I would be inclined to bump up the register just a bit, and go with what is widely used as an equivalent of 'threshold.' I think it fits perfectly in this context. Cheers from beautiful Da Nang, Vietnam :-)

Charles Davis Dec 9, 2018:

@Marcelo No, it isn't a current descriptor. Cambridge used it up to 2015:
https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-tests/advanced/re...

Here you can see it was still used in 2013:
https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/Images/22113-ket-understand...
But here's the 2015 certificate, on which it no longer appears:
https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/Images/understanding-your-s...

In other words, the ST here is out of date. But of course it's not up to the translator to update it. I am completely sure that "borderline" is being used in the ST as a descriptor in its pre-2015 sense. I think there is no possibility at all that it is not being used in a "technical" sense here. If they simply meant you had to achieve a pass in each skill they would have said so. Either this was drafted before 2015 or it was drafted after 2015 by someone who wasn't aware of or hadn't yet got used to the change.

Marcelo González Dec 9, 2018:

@Charles - Is 'borderline' a current descriptor? I haven't been able to find it. And it certainly does not appear to be a current one. Could possible support of its not being used in a technical sense be the fact that it appears in lowercase? Having said this, I'm inclined to think that both 'umbral' (as Chema suggests) and 'aprobado justo' work fine, and that it then would become a question of addressing the register, i.e., to reflect that of the source text or to perhaps increase it a bit to fully 'naturalize' the translation in this context of a university's (promotional?) text on its programs and requirements.

Currently, Cambridge appears to use numbers (a score of 180 here) that correspond to the CEFR, in this case with C1 as the minimum proficiency level (or threshold/'umbral') being targeted.

The link below is where I was redirected from the British Council's website:
https://www.cambridgeenglish.org/exams-and-tests/cambridge-e...

Chema Nieto Castañón Dec 9, 2018:

Entiendo las reticencias de Charles y entiendo que el texto original precisa especificar las equivalencias de términos en inglés y castellano para los descriptores utilizados cuando referidos al informe de resultados del examen que el alumno leerá en inglés, caso de traducirse. No creo sin embargo que la pertinencia de inclusión de una nota tal en el apartado correspondiente a la explicación de la tabla de resultados que recibirá el alumno deba, por evitarla, impedir traducir los descriptores utilizados o el sentido de los mismos cuando resulte pertinente, como es el caso. Pero vaya, se trata sólo de una opinión y es sin duda discutible, en particular en relación a un examen de nivel de inglés -aunque estirando mucho este argumento podría también cuestionarse la pertinencia misma de traducción del propio texto original ;)