問題詳情
閱讀測驗 47-50There continues to be great debate concerning the Chinese government’s simplification of thewriting system in china in the 1950’s. The utopian impulses behind standardization and simplification ofa living language are always understandable: increased literacy, administrative efficiency, and ease ofcommunication are praiseworthy goals. But those impulses can also strip a language of its humor,whimsy, and play, not to mention its capacity to accommodate new concepts and usages.Actually, traditional characters and simplified characters never were two separate and independentlanguage systems — they have always existed on a continuum. Many simplified characters areadaptations from common usage in Chinese handwritten script. Still, it is unarguable that the inability toread traditional characters is to close oneself off to much of the Chinese cultural legacy — its history andarts — before the 1950s.Since I grew up in Taiwan, where reading and writing in traditional characters is the norm,simplified characters were a novelty and a bit of a challenge, and perhaps, something to be sniffed at.But when my first job after college led me to Beijing to work as a literary translator, I spent the firstweek furtively consulting a little manual of “Simplified/Traditional Character Conversion” before Ibecame fully comfortable with the new system, including learning to write my name in a way that wascomprehensible to desk clerks. The experience taught me the dangers of being a cultural purist.Given the increasing flow of published and online materials among mainland China, Taiwan, and theoverseas Chinese communities, a literate reader must have the ability to use both types of characters.Thus, the answer to the traditional/simplified debate is not either/or, but — annoyingly for policymakers — both.
【題組】47. What is the most likely title for this article?
(A) The Advantages of Traditional Characters
(B) The Utopian Ideal in Writing
(C) Chinese Literacy in the Modern World
(D) China’s Cultural Legacy in the Modern World
參考答案
答案：C
難度：適中0.444444
統計：A(12),B(11),C(28),D(9),E(0)