How should I approach a translation (DE-EN) in an exam?

Some exam boards include a translation of a short text, usually journalistic, from German into English as part of their reading exam. This exists to test your reading comprehension, as well as your ability to render the text in clear English. Ideally, you should be looking to produce a text which is both accurate and reads fluently, but correct understanding and rendering of the meaning of the original text is the most important thing. So how might you approach such an exercise?
-Read the text through. Although the text will be taken from one of a few expected themes, and will therefore contain vocabulary you will have learned as revision, there may well be words or constructions you are unfamiliar with. Circle or highlight them as you come across them.
-Read the text through a second time. Does the wider context of the text allow you to work out what some of these words or constructions mean? If not, can you make an educated guess?
-Check the verb constructions. It's easy to slip up and translate the pluperfect as the perfect, or make another error of tense. Double check any more complex grammatical moments to make sure you've understood them correctly.
-Finally, begin rendering the text into English, sentence by sentence. Some people prefer to tick sentences or even words off as they go, to ensure they haven't missed anything.
-Depending how quickly you work, you might have time to produce two drafts. If this is the case, you may wish to translate first for more literal meaning, and then produce a second translation which reads more fluently. If you don't have enough time, or don't wish to do that, that's fine too - everybody has a different process.
-Make sure to read through your work. Your English spelling and grammar is important, of course, but what's most important is that you haven't missed anything out or misunderstood anything. If there are any errors you frequently made in class or practice papers, double-check for them - this can quite often be 'false friends', or grammatical elements/constructions we don't really use in English.