Translators and Bumblebees
CAT 2018 Slot 1 · Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension · Medium · Verbal Ability
This is a medium Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension question from the CAT 2018 Slot 1 paper. It tests Verbal Ability. The full answer key and a step-by-step explanation are below — try it yourself first, then reveal the solution.
Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out. Choose its number as your answer and key it in.
- Translators are like bumblebees.
- Though long since scientifically disproved, this factoid is still routinely trotted out.
- Similar pronouncements about the impossibility of translation have dogged practitioners since Leonardo Bruni's De interpretatione recta, published in 1424.
- Bees, unaware of these deliberations, have continued to flit from flower to flower, and translators continue to translate.
- In 1934, the French entomologist August Magnan pronounced the flight of the bumblebee to be aerodynamically impossible
2
Explanation
Sentences 1, 5, 3, and 4 form a parallel narrative drawing an analogy between translators and bumblebees (pronouncements of impossibility vs. continuing to fly/translate anyway). Sentence 2 is an extra sentence about the factoid being disproved.
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