#6 - Concept Reference, Must Be True, Author's Perspective

[g_lawyered]

Hi P.S.
I know a previous explanation discusses D over C. But I'm not fully grasping what makes answer D incorrect? I picked D because I understood the author to be extremely against making modifications to the film because it ruins the original film. I found support for D in paragraph 2

" Subtitling may be simply incompetent, full of mistakes, or used for actual censorship. "

to mean that he's completely against subtitling. So why would the author be okay with subtitles? Why is D incorrect?
I eliminated C because I didn't read support for the author to have some acceptance for translation. Where's the support for answer C?
Thanks in advance!

[Adam Tyson]

"May" leaves room for the possibility of an alternative, g_lawyered, and that alternative would be better than no subtitles because otherwise the Russian-speaking audience could not be expected to understand what the filmmaker was trying to create. It goes too far to say that the author would prefer that the audience be completely unable to understand any of the dialogue rather than run the risk of subtitles that are less than perfect!

[g_lawyered]

Hi Adam,
Thanks for the reply. Wow, it's crazy how 1 word the paragraph can have such an effect on answer D. I thought D was subtle enough because it uses "Should not" and doesn't use stronger language. I see now that doesn't match what the author's view in the paragraph. However, I still have the remaining question about answer C. Where is the support for this bold part of C

The film should be subtitled in Russian, but only if the translation is strictly faithful to the original.

. I believe C has stronger language than D ("only if" and "strictly faithful") and didn't find support for it in the paragraph- this is the reason why i eliminated C. Where can we find support for that kind of language that answer C states?
I appreciate your time and help!

[flowskiferda]

I still really don't like this question.

What if there's no possible way to create a strictly faithful subtitled version? C requires the assumption that the alternatives to a less than strictly faithful subtitled version, either a dubbed version or simply scrapping the project and leaving the film only in Italian, are better than a less-than-perfect subtitled version.

E, on the other hand, seems to be equally justified, requiring less of an assumption if anything. It's true that the author negatively regards restructuring films, but he/she does so on grounds that such restructuring "distorts the work's intent." (lines 20-21). So it seems that the primary concern of any reproduction of this film should be to keep the work's intent clear, which choice E suggests.

How should I know the assumption that justifies C is fair game? It seems that many similar assumptions have been the sources of flaws or necessary assumptions in the LR section (like where the author automatically decides a certain solution or course of action is better/worse than a reasonable alternative). It seems a bit contradictory on the test writers' part that the assumption that makes choice C right is so similar to the sort of assumption that they determine to be a source of flawed reasoning, even if it's on a different section of the test.

Thanks for any help you can offer!

[Adam Tyson]

Try looking at this question again through the lens of the question stem, flowskiferda. This is not a question of what the author of the passage would suggest. It's asking which of these five proposals "the author would be most likely to agree with." So, of these five proposals, which one is the author most likely to say "yeah, that would be okay."

In the passage, the author says of subtitles only that they "may" have problems. The implication is that those problems can be avoided, and the author would probably not mind high quality subtitles. But when they speak of reediting the film, they put "more understandable" in quotation marks, which indicates that the author thinks that this process does not, in fact, ever achieve that goal.

The structure of the passage should also be a signal to us. Beginning in the second paragraph, the author gives us a list of things that can mutilate a film, a list that seems to get worse and worse as we progress through it. Based on that progression, it's reasonable to think that subtitles are the least damaging alteration to a film, while dubbing, reediting, and new titles are all worse. The transfer to video or TV is the worst of all.

So, between accurate subtitles that avoid all the problems the author had with subtitles, and mutilating the film by reediting it, which one would this author be more likely to say "okay, that seems to be acceptable"?

The question you raise about whether subtitles can be accurate is not actually relevant. That's a problem that the distributor might face that would require a reevaluation of their plan, but the starting position should be to keep alterations to a minimum, and if accurate subtitles can be done, as per answer C, then that would be the least intrusive approach. Our author would want the distributor to try that first before resorting to things that are more intrusive.