OFFICIAL EXPLANATION

(A) No. If stylistic differences between human translators could be reduced by providing guidelines for writing, there would be fewer reasons to use a computer for translation. This answer-choice provides an alternate solution to the stated problem.

(B) No. To determine the relative accuracy of computer versus human translations, numerical evaluations would be very useful.

(C) Yes. The issue is the different writing styles within a given document. The argument advocates using a single computer program to translate a given document—thus, insuring the writing style will be consistent throughout the document.

(D) No. The argument presumes that accurate translation is important. It is certainly relevant to determine whether a translation program makes errors that
change the meaning of the text.

(E) No. Knowing how the translation is used is important for determining whether the style of the translation is more important than its accuracy.
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(A) whether the problem of stylistic variety in human translation could be solved by giving stylistic guidelines to human translators
If the problem of stylistic variety in human translation could be solved would address one of the issues discussed in the prompt.

(B) whether numerical comparisons of the accuracy of translations can reasonably be made
If numerical comparisons of the accuracy of translations can be made, then we can truly know which translations are or are not good ones.

(C) whether computer translation programs, like human translators, each have their own distinct writing style
This would be necessary to know if the computer translations programs are going to split translations as humans do. Since they won't be doing that in this scenario, it is not important.

(D) whether the computer translation contains errors of grammar and usage that drastically alter the meaning of the text
This is important to know because if computer translation may change the meaning of the text, it may be better to give the task to a human translator who would take longer but provide a translation with an unaltered meaning.

(E) how the accuracy rate of computer translation programs compares with that of human translators in relation to the users’ needs
Knowing the accuracy rate is very necessary to make a decision about whether a computer translation program is better than a human translator in each scenario.

The correct answer is answer choice C.


Please give kudos if this was helpful in any way!

its C --- MY reasoning :

C is taking about the style difference among computer programs ...that is irrelevant as one document is converted by only one computer program that will create a consistent doc.....

IMO C
As option c talks about the computer's writing style which is irrelevant because a long document is fully translated by a single computer, so the document would not have any difference in the translation .

nightblade354 eakabuah
Well, i am having a bad day.
As per my understanding the problem discussed was that a long document when translated was not uniform in style, but when the same was translated by a computer program it was uniform in style, but the document now has some accuracy issues. So the argument must be assuming that Uniformity matters over Accuracy or that the accuracy of translation is same when translated by either of the two, in order to draw conculsion: "Therefore, when a long document needs to be translated quickly, it is better to use a computer translation program than human translators.". Isn't option E brings into play the assumption which if stated strengthens the argument.

deveshj21, we are trying to find the item that LEAST helps our cause. Your explanation shows that you understand that (E) helps in a tremendous way, so there is no way it can be our answer.
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nightblade354
Kill me seriously kill me, I misread the question particularly "LEAST". Thankyou for making me notice.

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Hi! In this question though I know that C is correct answer, but I wasn't able to eliminate B. Because in the passage it is already mentioned that computers translate with an 80% accuracy rate. So, that would already cover the grammar and meaning error. Please tell what am I missing. AndrewN IanStewart DmitryFarber

First, C is clearly irrelevant here, while B talks about something that might be relevant (accuracy), so C will be the right answer -- in a test situation, you wouldn't want to spend any time working out why B is wrong.

Answer B is a bit strange, for the reason you mention. I don't think you'd see a similar answer choice on the GMAT, because B seems to bring a premise into question, and I can't think of any GMAT questions that tread close to that line. It is, however, reasonable to wonder what that "80% accuracy" figure means, since, as the stem says, translation is a very complex task. What is the numerator and what is the denominator? If the author of the argument arrived at the 80% figure by one method (counting spelling mistakes per word, say), but there are many other methods you could use (grammar mistakes per sentence, say, or meaning errors per paragraph), there might not be a reasonable way to measure accuracy numerically. That's how I read answer B -- even reading the stem, the possibility is still open that accuracy can't correctly be numerically compared, and it would be useful to know if that's possible. There might be a better way to think about it, but in any event, if we learned we can't compare translators numerically, the 80% figure in the stem becomes meaningless, so we have less evidence that computer translators are competent. So B certainly matters.

On a side note, I find the argument bizarre: an 80% accuracy rate in translation sounds hopelessly bad to me, but the author of the stem seems to want us to think it's very good.
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