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Information and IdeasVery hardSupporting a nuanced claim about a translator's diary

Information and Ideas practice question

Scholars contend that the translator Ines Vidal treated the original's imperfections — its awkward turns and odd repetitions — as the author's property, to be carried into the new language rather than corrected. Her working diary supports this: ____

Which quotation from the work most effectively illustrates the claim?

  1. A. "Today I let the sentence stay awkward in my language, because its awkwardness is the author's own — smoothing it would be a small betrayal dressed as help."Correct
  2. B. "The publisher has moved the deadline forward by a month, and I despair of finishing."
  3. C. "I have found a dictionary of the dialect at last, in a bookshop near the station."
  4. D. "The author's letters to me are warm, though we have never met."

Answer: A. "Today I let the sentence stay awkward in my language, because its awkwardness is the author's own — smoothing it would be a small betrayal dressed as help."

The claim is that she preserved even the original's flaws as authorial property; choosing to keep an awkward sentence — and calling smoothing a 'betrayal' — enacts exactly that principle.

Why the other answers are wrong

B. "The publisher has moved the deadline forward by a month, and I despair of finishing."
Deadline anxiety says nothing about her fidelity to the original's roughness.
C. "I have found a dictionary of the dialect at last, in a bookshop near the station."
Finding a dictionary is research, not evidence of preserving flaws.
D. "The author's letters to me are warm, though we have never met."
Warm letters describe the relationship, not her translation ethics.

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