【1番】<下線部訳の問題> 全文訳に近いものでした。ニューズウィークから出題されたものですが、以下の英文が少し改訂されて出題されました。 Our most striking surprise was that the image of Japan as a profoundly inward place no longer applies. To someone who has lived for long periods in America and Western Europe, there is nothing particularly challenging about Japan, not anymore. All the familiar landmarks of urban life are there:the same suicidal bike messengers, the same seasonal store sales, the same credit cards. To be sure, the language is tough. But in recent years, all signs in the subway and many in the streets have been printed in English as well as in Japanese, so navigating Tokyo is no longer a bewildering slog through a maze of kanji characters. Our next surprise discovery was the rainbow of increasingly integrated immigrants, foreigners and ethnic Japanese from places like Peru and Brazil. There's the Indian cashier in my local supermarket, always ready to help out when the hapless foreign customer's Japanese comes up short. There's the Filipino storeowner (and naturalized Japanese citizen) whose shop fits so neatly into its street in western Tokyo that it can be easily missed.
that-節の補語用法、省略、whose に導かれる関係代名詞節、その節のなかでのso 〜 that の構文の使用、といった文法、英文構造を明確に把握しているかどうか、challenging, suicidal, come up short などの和訳の仕方が問われました。 文法、英検2級から準1級レベルの語彙力、文脈把握力がある人とそうでない人との差がつくところです。