Translation

 In today's globalised world, the role the translator plays is, (0)......... a doubt, crucial. Each and (9) .......... time translators set to work they have a heavy responsibility to communicate as accurately as possible. A poor translation might merely cause amusement, but at (10)............ , the consequences could sometimes be extremely serious.

There are a great many problems encountered in the translation process, some deriving (11) .......... the grammatical differences between languages and others caused by idioms, not to mention highly specific cultural references that some argue, with good (12)........... perhaps, cannot be successfully translated.

It (13) .......... without saying that translators should have a well-developed sensitivity to their mother tongue and the second language they work with. But whereas once they needed little (14) .......... than exceptional linguistic skills, translators nowadays may require specialist knowledge of areas such as medicine, law or technology.

One factor they consider is how the translation sounds. Here, they may make (15)............. of strategies such as reading their translation aloud, thereby ensuring that words are not put in a sentence if, (16) .......... individually accurate and appropriate, together they sound harsh or unpleasant.

Reading and use of English

Part 3

For questions 17—24, read the text below. Use the word given in capitals at the end of some of the lines to form a word that fits in the gap in the same line. There is an example at the beginning (0).

The need to read

Example: (0) OCCASION: OCCASIONALLY

All children (0)........... ask why we should bother reading. Now, 500 years after Gutenberg's printing press (17) .......... reading, recent technological advances mean psychologists may be able to find an answer. Using brain scans, they have found we create mental simulations of situations (18)......... in a book and weave these together with real-life experiences to create a new way of thinking. This is something many of us will understand (19) .......... when we look back and realise that an (20)........... book that we read in the past had an absolutely (21)............ effect on how we view the world. This transformation takes place only when we lose ourselves (22).......... in a book. Studies have found this deep reading makes us more sympathetic, more alert to the (23)............ lives of others.

Here then is the irrefutable answer to our initial question, and it means that reading must continue to be (24)........... in our culture.

Reading and use of English

Part 4

For question 25—30, complete the second sentence so that it has a similar meaning to the first sentence, using the word given.

Do not change the word given. You must use between two and five words, including the word given. Here is an example (O).

Example:

0. Do you mind if I watch you while you paint?

OBJECTION

Do you.................................................................. you while you paint?

The gap can be filled by the words 'HAVE ANY OBJECTION TO MY WATCHING'.

Write only the missing words IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

25.I don't think you'll find that many road atlases have such detailed maps.

FEW

I ................................................................ have such detailed maps.

26. The owner of the shop said that we didn't have to buy anything; we could just look round.

 OBLIGATION

The owner of the shop said that we ....................................................................... a purchase; we could just look round.

27. Martin was too lazy to present any of his ideas at the meeting

 BOTHERED

Martin  .................................................. forward any of his ideas at the meeting yesterday.

28.  Once he'd handed in his entry, the only thing Tom could do was wait for the judge's decision.

NOTHING

Once he'd handed in his entry, there .............................................................. wait for the judge's decision.

29. Philip said that his friends were surprised when he suddenly decided to retire.

CAME

Philip said that his .............................................................. to his friends.

30. Susan doesn't intend to climb that mountain again. 

HAS

Susan .................................................................................. that mountain again.

Reading and use of English

Part 5

You are going to read an article about the 19th century French painter, Edouard Manet.  For questions 31—36, choose the answer (A, B, C or D) which you think fits best according to the text.

Manet: Portraying Life

A new exhibition of portraits by the great French painter, Manet

It is probably fair to say that Manet is not associated with the idea of penetrating portraiture. Although he used models as well as friends and insisted on painting only from prolonged, frequent sittings, it wasn't to dig deep into the psyche of his subjects, but to comment on their place through their appearance. All Manet's works were an assault. All, except for the flower paintings so derided by modern curators, were efforts to catch something of the contemporary world about him.

Very few of Manet's extensive output of portraits were commissioned. As the son of wealthy parents, he didn't need to earn his crust this way. Instead he painted his family, particularly his wife, the Dutch-born Suzanne Leenhoff, and her son, Léon, friends from among his wide circle of cultural contacts and professional models. What was it that he was seeking from these pictures? The simplest answer is ‘realism’, the observation of what was new and contemporary, which his mentor, the poet and critic Charles Baudelaire, proclaimed as the true test of modern art. Realism meant not just painting accurately from life, but stripping art of all the connotations of moral lesson and monumentality found in traditional art. Its heroes would become the man about town, the observer, the dandy.

But realism in portraiture for Manet was never merely a matter of recording the face and figure with verisimilitude. ‘I cannot do anything without the model,’ declared Manet. ‘I do not know how to invent…If I amount to anything today, I put it down to precise interpretation and faithful analysis.’ But it was the ‘interpretation’ and ‘analysis’ that made him so different. With men it was to convey what they meant for the world about them. His portrait of Zacharie Astruc, the writer and critic who had done much to support him in his early years, is divided into two parts. On the right, Astruc sits somewhat pompously, his hand thrust into his jacket, while to the left is seen his wife in the kitchen, along with the symbols of the domestic life which underpins him. The portrait of Emile Zola, another great supporter, arranges the novelist with the attributes of his art criticism, an open book on Spanish art in his hand and a Japanese print above his desk.

With women it is quite different. Manet was clearly entranced by them, soaking up their vivacity, admiring their poise and revelling in a pretty face. It doesn't appear to have been predatory. Indeed the most touching pictures in the exhibition remain those of his wife, whom he painted more often and for longer than any other sitter; she is depicted at the piano, stroking the cat, resting in the conservatory. The plump and humorous face is always done with fondness, the background painted with quick, fleeting brushstrokes that envelop the sitter in the flowers around her or the dress she is wearing.

For Manet, dress was an assertion of modernity, a way of depicting the modern bourgeois woman who was emerging from the constraints of an aristocratic past. But, going round these galleries, it is difficult not to believe that he thought women the better, or at least the more life-enhancing, of the species. It is noticeable that in almost all the portraits of couples or couples with children — in the rather touching portrait of The Monet Family in Their Garden at Argenteuil and In the Garden of 1870 — it is the women who take the foremost role. It's more than their attractions and the dress; it's that Manet looks on them as the future more than the men in the background.

In Manet's portraiture, the parts don't add up to a whole. His efforts to start each picture anew don't make for an easy synthesis and, as such, gallery curators struggle to categorise them. A gathering of these varied and sometimes uneven works can't express all of the man. For that you really do need his bigger set pieces. This exhibition is not a gathering of masterpieces. Nor is it a comprehensive showing of his portraiture, given the paucity of the borrowings from France. But what you have is the outpouring of one of the towering geniuses of art who stood each time before his canvas with a subject, thought and thought about what he wanted to say and then worked to express it. Forget the whole, just look at the individual works and feel the mind behind them.

Reading and use of English

Part 7

You are going to read an extract from a book about a trip to the country of Malawi.  Seven paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Seven paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from the paragraphs A – G the one which fits each gap (41 – 46). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.

Lake Malawi's lost resort

Novelist Marina Lewycka reveals how getting lost in the African buch led her to find paradise by Lake Malawi

It's easy to get off the beaten track in Malawi. In fact it can be difficult to stay on it, as we found three years ago when we were driving up the lake road from Salima towards Nkhata Bay for a week's holiday, in my daughter's old low-slung Nissan Bluebird, her boyfriend at the wheel.

It became obvious that we weren't going to get to Nkhata Bay, and we'd have to stop somewhere overnight. We drove to a couple of upmarket lodges, but they were closed, or full, or just didn't like the look of us. We were directed to other, more remote places, which either didn't exist, or were also full; we were beginning to get worried.

After a kilometre or so, it divided into a number of less distinct ones. They were definitely not beaten — they were hardly more than faint trails. There was no light ahead — in fact, there was no light anywhere, apart from the stars, which hung so close and bright you almost felt you could reach up and pick them out of the sky like low-hanging fruit.

Beyond the narrow beam of our headlights, it was pitch black. All around us were prickly bushes, their vague menacing shapes blocking out the lie of the land. Swarms of mosquitoes smelled our fear, and swooped.

Then we heard voices, coming from somewhere beyond the bushes. Two boys appeared, followed by an older man. They greeted us, grinning. In fact, they might have been laughing at us. We didn't care. Greetings were exchanged. People are very polite in Malawi.

We left the car on and followed them down a series of dark winding tracks, without knowing who they were or where they were taking us. At last we came to a small hamlet, half a dozen thatched mud-walled houses, all closed up for the night. They called, and a man emerged from one of the houses; he was tall, and blind in one eye. We asked whether we could stay at the Maia Beach accommodation. Apparently unsurprised by these three pale strangers who'd turned up on his doorstep in the middle of the night, he smiled his assent. He fetched keys, and we followed him as he set off again down a winding track through the bushes.

And there, along the shore, was a cluster of small bamboo huts. One was opened up for us. A torch was found. A price was agreed. Bedding was brought. The mosquito nets were full of holes, but I had a sewing kit, and the kindness of our hosts more than made up for any discomforts.

The next morning we were woken by bright sunlight, needling through the cracks in the bamboo wall, and the sound of children's voices. I pushed open the door of our hut, and gasped at the sheer beauty of our surroundings. We'd landed in paradise. There, just a few metres away, was a crescent of silver sand lapped by the crystal water of the lake. A couple of palm trees waved lazy branches against the sun. A gaggle of ragged smiling children had gathered at our door, chattering excitedly. As I stepped outside, they fell silent for a moment, then burst into a chorus: ‘Good afternoon. Good morning. How are you? Do you speak English? What is your name?’

A. It didn't take many words to explain what had With some careful manoeuvering and some brute force, slowly, slowly, we inched on to firmer ground. We asked for directions to the Maia Beach resort. It transpired that it had closed down last year but someone in a nearby village had a key.

B. It was that dangerous time when the roads are swarming with villagers and their animals, and drivers of vehicles without functioning lights or brakes career around potholes, also hurrying homewards. For twilight is short in Malawi, and when night comes, the darkness is absolute.

C. After a while they thinned out and I could see the soft star-lit glimmer of Lake Malawi spread before us like a wide swathe of grey silk, so still you'd never have guessed it was water, apart from a faint ripple that wrinkled its surface when the breeze stirred.

D.We drove back slowly, seeking a turning off the road, a track towards the lake, but there was no opening, not even a gap between the prickly bushes where the track should have been, only the same unremitting vista of low trees, bushes and sand.

E. This place, we were told, had been created by an English couple who intended to use the proceeds to fund a school and a health centre in the But few tourists had ever made it here, and no one knew whether the couple would ever return.

F. Suddenly, out of the dusk, a crooked, hand-painted wooden sign flickered across our headlights: ‘Maia Beach Cafe Accommodation’. We let out a cheer, executed a U-turn, and set out down the sandy track signposted towards the beach.

G. We held our breath and listened to the silence. Somewhere far away there was a sound of drumming, and we could smell wood smoke, which suggested some kind of habitation.

H.Then, all of a sudden, our wheels hit a patch of soft sand, skidded, and sank in. Getting out to assess the situation, we saw that three wheels were hopelessly churning up the sand; the fourth was spinning free, perched over a sandy bluff with a four-foot drop beneath. If we slipped down there, we would never, ever get the car out again.

Reading and use of English

Part 8

You are going to read extracts from an article about favourite old songs. For questions 47 – 56, choose from the sections (A – D). The sections may be chosen more than once.

Old Music

Five people write about musicians and songs that have been important to them in their life

 A. At Last I Am Free by Robert Wyatt

Originally written for those masters of disco, Chic, it seems a long journey to Robert Wyatt‘s version. Wyatt is one of the great heroes of British counter-culture, whose blend of political commitment and musical experiment has led to a career of almost unrivalled range and influence. On this song he combines the heartbreaking honesty familiar from his other work with a voice that is somehow at once shrill but deeply soulful and communicative. The lyrics speak of a failing relationship but the way Wyatt sings it could be about anything — any momentous parting or new beginnings. The line ‘I can hardly see in front of me’ is one of those phrases in pop music that come along from time to time that mean almost nothing yet bulge under the weight of a thousand projected meanings for a thousand different listeners.

B. Another Day by Roy Harper

Decades on from its 1974 release Another Day’ still strikes me as one of the most poignant and beautiful songs ever; a regretful ode to a lost love encountered once again, full of thwarted possibilities that the singer acknowledges but refuses to grasp and with Regrets on both sides about things that should have been said but were not. At the song's end, even the possibility for words runs out as the former lovers stand with the shades of their former selves awkwardly between them. Others have covered the song, but none is better than Harper‘s original version, which Harper himself believes to be one of the ‘best love songs I wrote’. Although Harper's beautiful, angry and sometimes passionate songs fell into a quiet obscurity for a while, these days he is namechecked at almost every turn by modern-day artists.

C. Say HelloWave Goodbye by Soft Cell

This song is a time machine for men and women of a certain age. Soft Cell had questionable credibility even then, so this was always a guilty pleasure for me. It has one of the best opening lines, ever — ‘I never went to the Pink Flamingo, but if I had, I am sure I would have found someone in the doorway, crying in the rain’. It was all slightly seedy —a down-at-heel, defeated romanticism. The oboe hitting the high notes offers a sharp reminder that singer Marc Almond can‘t manage the same, but the combination of the two works a treat, backed by a rhythm that doesn‘t seem to want to end. Back then, the pain was all imagined. Thirty years on, you can wallow in proper melancholy all you like. But make sure the kids are out.

D. Maggie May by Rod Stewart

I once went to an 18th birthday party disco. ‘Maggie May’ came on and instantly the place erupted; at least half a dozen strapping blokes more suited to the great outdoors started marching around clutching invisible microphone stands. It was a bizarre sight, but testimony to the hold that Stewart had at that time over lads who felt compelled to ape him. What is it about that song? A mood of end-of-summer rueful regret, mingled with rite of passage reminiscence? It came out in September 1971; I had just broken up with a girl who was admittedly nothing like woman-of-the-world Maggie. But ‘you made a first-class fool out of me’ — well, I kidded myself that rang true, at the time. Perhaps it was just the footballs, scarves, and glorious, ramshackle live appearances that appealed to men my age.

E. Martha by Tom Waits

Written when Tom Waits was just 24, Martha finds this earliest incarnation of one of the US's most intriguing musical characters dropping comfortably into the slippers of a much, much older man. Calling long-distance to an old flame, he lays his heart bare about their past together and offers the beautifully underplayed revelation that he is still in love with her. The poignancy of this call taking place when both are probably now well into their 50s is given added weight — that so much time could never erase this strength of feeling. The lyrics make you wish you could be there to see these two fictional characters reunited. In the age of social media, this track stands as a memorial to a time when you could easily lose touch with someone so very close to you, as time marched brutally on.

Which extract mentions