ENGLISH ENTRANCE EXAM: JUNE 13, 2015 Name and Surname(s): Time allowed for this exam: 2 Hours Before starting, please read the following carefully: All mobile phones must be turned off. Make sure your name is correctly given above. There are three parts to this exam each carries the same weight: I. Reading Comprehension II. Language Work III. Written Essay. Write all your answers in English in this exam booklet. Use the spaces provided. All rough paper will be collected after the exam. POLITE WARNING! ANY TALKING, COPYING OR USE OF NON- AUTHORISED DEVICES DURING THE EXAM WILL MEAN AUTOMATIC AND IMMEDIATE DISQUALIFICATION
I. Reading Comprehension II. Language Work III. Essay 1
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 WHY IS A UNIVERSAL TRANSLATOR SO ELUSIVE? With a global economy and flights that can take you all over the world in hours, why is it that we still struggle with a language barrier that technology is finding hard to break down? Turn on a TV in a Tokyo hotel room and you will get, if you do not speak the language, a jumble of incomprehensible symbols. And from the moment you touch down in a Japanese airport, chances are you will be faced with a world that is difficult to decode. In fact, some of the world's most untranslatable words are Japanese: the word "naa", used in the Kansai area of Japan to emphasise something or agree with someone, is listed third among the most difficult words to translate. So what can tourists do when they are confronted by information they cannot process? There are always translators or interpreters to get out of a tricky situation, but they are expensive and often outside the pocket of the average tourist. The obvious solution is a translation tool gadget, right? But this is easier said than done. Science fiction has always got around the problem with devices called universal translators, as in Doctor Who's Tardis or Star Trek. But science fact is a lot trickier. There are reading aids already on the web - most notably Google Translate, available in over 50 languages: just enter the link and the tool does all the hard work. The problem is that, so far, it is quite literal and lacks the shades of meaning that a professional interpreter can give. Those at Google admit that while they are working on this, it may be some time before 2
anyone can offer human-quality translations. 35 40 45 50 Kanji understand? Let s return to the question of Japanese. It is particularly challenging as there are three different types of writing. One alphabet is especially for foreign words, and if that was not complicated enough, there are also over 50,000 symbols - Kanji - which are actually pictures of whole words. If you want to get through daily life in Japan you need to know about 2,000 of them! There is an iphone app called WishoTouch that lets you enter Kanji by hand and then gives you a dictionary definition, but it is essential to know the order of the different strokes. There is an addon that lets you photograph your mystery Kanji, but if the original is not written neatly it simply will not recognise it. Meanwhile, in the sphere of English, there is a character reader translation tool that deals with written text called Quicktionary. It looks like a pen and when swiped across text it will give you a translation. At least, that is the idea. This has given some impressive results with short texts but it only works with two typefaces - a problem shared by most text readers. Artificial intelligence? Soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq have been using a mobile translation device when talking to local people with apparently good 3
results. The product is Voxtec's Phraselator, which has been the choice of the US military for years. It is strictly a one-way translator, containing over 100,000 phrases you tap in the phrase you want and it can immediately speak a translation in about 40 different languages. While phrases like drop your weapon are not particularly useful for most tourist destinations, others such as I m taking a special medication for my blood pressure would be. However, with a price tag of around 2,500 dollars, this is unlikely to be found in the pockets of the average tourist. Even if a machine can eventually translate speech in real time across hundreds of languages, it would still need some non-artificial intelligence to work out what people are actually implying. No matter what country we are in, we do not always say what we mean. The Japanese prefer to speak in a roundabout way, so if a taxi driver said to you it's difficult to get there in 10 minutes, he actually means it's impossible. Likewise when Japanese people want to turn down a request or invitation, they would say I'll think about it, but they are really saying No. And even if you get the right words, you might get them in the wrong order. In English, the basic word order is subject-verb-object, but in Japanese the best word order is subject-object-verb. So, I bought tea at Harrods yesterday would be, in Japanese, yesterday I Harrods at tea bought. In Star Trek, their universal translation device was not invented until the latter half of the 22nd Century. Will today s travellers have to wait that long for 4
something similar in real life? 5
I. Reading Comprehension (10 points) Answer the following questions using your own words: 1. What are the problems translating from Japanese? (2 points) 2. According to the author, how useful is Google Translate? (2 points) 3. How practical are the character reader tools mentioned in this article? (2 points) 6
4. How useful is Voxtec s Phraselator? (2 points) 5. How does the author feel about translation technology available at the moment? (2 points) 7
II. Language Work (10 points) A) Explain the meaning of the following words / phrases in the context in which they appear (5 points): 1. struggle (l. 2): 2. challenging (l. 20): 3. swiped (l. 31): 4. non-artificial (l. 46): 5. turn down (l. 49): B) Find a word or phrase synonym in the text for the following (5 points): 1. probably 8
2. difficult 3. manually 4. similar to 5. type / enter 9
III. Essay Instructions Write a short essay (approximately 150-175 words) in response to the question below. Your essay should be clearly organised and coherent. Allow time to revise and check your essay for formal accuracy, spelling and punctuation. Use the space below to write your essay What do you understand by the phrase lost in translation? 10