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Difficulty: HardPrimary Purpose of the Whole Text

For centuries, translation scholars viewed the seventeenth-century French practice of *les belles infidèles*—translations that modified classical texts to conform to contemporary French standards of taste and grammar—as a mere symptom of cultural chauvinism. Recently, however, translation theorist Lawrence Venuti and others have reevaluated these adaptations. They argue that rather than simply reflecting national self-aggrandizement, the translators' modifications served a complex rhetorical function: they domesticated foreign texts to make them politically and intellectually accessible to a newly emerging bourgeois reading public, thereby expanding the democratic reach of literature. Thus, what was once dismissed as infidelity to the original source is now recognized as a strategic, albeit controversial, effort to reshape the domestic literary canon.

Which choice best states the main purpose of the text?

  1. To outline a shift in how scholars perceive a historical translation practice.Answer
  2. B
    To argue that seventeenth-century French translators were motivated primarily by a desire to democratize literature.
  3. C
    To criticize the practice of *les belles infidèles* for its failure to maintain fidelity to classical source texts.
  4. D
    To describe the specific grammatical modifications that characterized seventeenth-century French translations.

Answer

To outline a shift in how scholars perceive a historical translation practice.
The correct answer is correct because it accurately summarizes the transition in the passage from introducing the traditional view of a translation practice to discussing a modern scholarly reevaluation, encapsulating the entire text's progression.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the structure of the passage.
The passage starts by describing a long-standing view of a historical translation practice, introduces a recent reevaluation of that practice, and concludes with a summary of how perspective on the practice has changed.
Understanding the structural flow of the text helps identify the author's primary objective in writing the entire passage.
2
Differentiate between the main purpose and secondary claims or details.
The claims about the translators' motivations (democratizing literature) and the details of their methods (grammatical modifications) are secondary points supporting the broader discussion of how the practice is viewed by scholars.
This prevents selecting options that focus too narrowly on specific elements rather than the text as a whole.
3
Evaluate the choices to find the one that best captures the transition in perspective from the beginning to the end of the text.
The option stating that the purpose is to outline a shift in how scholars perceive a historical translation practice matches this global focus.
The correct answer must encompass the entire text's development rather than a single claim or detail.

Key Concept

Identifying the primary purpose of an entire text requires recognizing its overall structural trajectory and distinguishing the overarching objective from supporting arguments or details.
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Primary Purpose of the Whole Text

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