单选题
Passage 2

French are elegant people. They are artists in everyday life, having a very good taste in everything. They don't like American tourists wearing jeans to go into their luxurious and exquisite five-star restaurants. So one of the restaurants put a notice outside its front door. It read "No trousers, please!"
A gourmet coffee was sold in Tokyo as an antidote to stress. Its name supposedly meant to people that it would soothe the troubled breast. Yet when it was printed in English, it turned out to be "Ease Your Bosoms".
Swedes started a promotion stunt to promote the sales of their vacuum cleaner named Electro. Their original ad slogan was translated as "Nothing Sucks Like Electro".
The General Motors' selling of Chevrolet was very bad in South America. And the reason? The translation of this brand sounds like "no va", which means "It doesn't go" in Spanish.
When Pepsi-cola invaded the huge Chinese and German markets, the efforts initially fizzled. The product's slogan, "Come alive with the Pepsi generation", was rendered into German as "come out of the grave with Pepsi". Coca-Cola discovered something had gone wrong in China. The Chinese characters chosen for the world-famous product sound like "Bite the Wax Tadpole".
A beer company's slogan "Turn it loose" became, in Spanish, equivalent to "suffer from diarrhea".
A company translated its sticky tape slogan into Japanese and came up with a sticky problem. The slogan "Sticks like crazy" became literally "it sticks foolishly" in Japanese.
A tonic produced in China is made of royal jelly and is supposed to be very effective for some chronic diseases. Yet it was translated as "oral liquid", which means "saliva" in English. In the brochure, it was described in this way: "it tastes like medicine", when the language in the original meant to use it as a food therapy.
Even the wrong nonverbal cue can bring havoc to a product. A baby food company initially packaged their African products just the same as in the U.S.--with a cute baby picture on the jar. They didn't realize that because so many Africans cannot read, nearly all packaged products sold in African carry pictures of what is inside. Pureed baby! How horrible!
In an Asian city, where traffic is really very bad, to secure people's safety, the municipal government has built underground passageways. Pedestrians are asked to use them whenever they need to cross the main street. A sign was posted once on the roadside, pointing to the entrance to an underground passageway, intending to notify English-speaking passengers, "Go underground".
We chuckled at such clumsy translations. Is there anything wrong in the language? We must be aware that few words and idioms can be literally translated. It's best to hire the best for translation. Don't take it for granted that as long as one speaks a little English, he is autonomously able to do the translation. It takes a while to learn to be a good translator.

单选题 "No trousers, please!" sounds funny on the front door of a five-star restaurant, because it could mean"______" in English.
A. Take offyour trousers, then come in, please
B. We don't sell any trousers here
C. We don't have any pairs of trousers here
D. Anyone who does not wear trousers is not welcome
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 本题可参照第一段。从中可知,法国人的本意是不喜欢美国旅行者穿牛仔裤进 入他们的五星级豪华酒店,是希望他们穿得优雅、正式些。但“No trousers,please!”却可以 理解成A项。
单选题 From the passage, you may guess that Chevrolet is most probably______
A. shoes of some kind that South Americans like
B. the brand name of a kind of vehicle
C. a pet animal which runs fast
D. a word in Spanish which has a very bad meaning
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 根据文中第四段的:The General Motors' selling ofChevrolet was very bad in South America.And the reason?The translation of this brand sounds like“no va”,which means“It doesn't go”in Spanish.可知,通用汽车公司的雪佛兰牌汽车在南非的销售非常差,原因是这 种汽车牌子的翻译听起来像“no va”,在西班牙语中的意思是“走不动”。因此D项为正确 答案。
单选题 Any product with a cute baby picture on the jar will most probably______in Africa, according to the author.
A. sell well B. receive favorable attention
C. cause great interest D. bring an end to the product
【正确答案】 D
【答案解析】[解析] 根据文中的“Even the wrong nonverbal cue can bring havoc to a product.A baby food company initially packaged their African products just the same as in the U.S.—with a cute baby picture on the jar.They didn't realize that because SO many Africans cannot read,nearly all packaged products sold in African carry pictures of what is inside.”可知,多数非洲人不识字, 几乎所有在非洲出售的有外包装的产品,里面销售的都是图片上的产品。再根据“bring havoc to a product”可知,D项为正确答案。
单选题 The Chinese characters chosen for Coca-Cola______in China first.
A. were well received B. had a wrong name
C. sounded terrible in the language D. were all China words
【正确答案】 C
【答案解析】[解析] 根据文中第五段的最后一句:The Chinese characters chosen for the world—famous product sound like“Bite the WaX Tadpole.”可知,C项为正确答案。
单选题 Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
A. Clumsy translations can sometimes produce the desired effect.
B. We should not take it for granted that anything can be translated.
C. Few words and idioms can be literally translated.
D. Clumsy translation could mean more than just a laughing matter.
【正确答案】 A
【答案解析】[解析] 纵观全文,只有A项未在文中提及。拙劣的翻译不仅是一个好笑的事,它所造 成的影响也极大,这从文中前面几段可以看出。因此D项也是正确的。