Key Ideas and Details

Sample questions

1. The Watchmaker's Bench

   My grandfather's shop smelled of oil and brass, a smell I could still find on my own hands at dinner after an afternoon of sweeping his floor. The sign above the door read SAMIR HADDAD, CLOCKS & WATCHES, though the paint had faded so badly that most customers found the place by memory rather than by sight.

   That autumn, the summer I turned sixteen having just ended, I noticed that his hands had begun to shake. It was slight at first, a tremor that appeared only when he lifted the tweezers to set a tiny screw. He pretended not to notice, and so did I. But one afternoon a woman brought in a pocket watch that had belonged to her father, and when my grandfather opened the case, the tweezers slipped and the balance wheel skittered across the bench.

   He did not curse. He simply set the tweezers down, folded his hands, and looked at them as though they belonged to someone else.

   "Noor," he said. "Come here."

   I had watched him work for years, perched on the stool by the window, but I had never been allowed to touch anything more delicate than a wall clock. Now he slid the loupe across the bench to me. "Find the wheel first," he said. "Then we will see."

   I found it lodged against the leg of the lamp. My heart was pounding so loudly that I was sure the woman, waiting by the counter, could hear it. My grandfather talked me through each step in the same low voice he used to hum along to the radio: lift, turn, seat the pivot, do not force it, never force it. When the balance wheel finally caught and began its steady back-and-forth, he let out a breath I hadn't known he was holding.

   The woman wept a little when she heard it ticking. She paid, thanked us both, and left, the bell over the door jangling behind her.

   For a long time my grandfather said nothing. Then he reached under the bench and pulled out a wooden box I had never seen before. Inside was a set of tools, smaller than his own, the handles worn smooth.

   "These were mine," he said, "when I was your age. My teacher gave them to me the day my hands became steadier than his."

   I understood then that he was not giving me a gift so much as handing me a responsibility, and that he had been waiting, perhaps for a long time, for the right afternoon to do it.

   Question 1

   The passage is best described as being told from the point of view of a narrator who is:

   • A.

     explaining why she decided not to follow her grandfather into the watch-repair trade.

   • B.

     describing the history of her family's business across several generations.

   • C.

     comparing her grandfather's methods with those of his own teacher.

   • D.

     recalling a moment when she first took on an important task in her grandfather's shop.

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2. Question 2

   The grandfather's reaction when the balance wheel slips is best described as:

   • A.

     careless and amused.

   • B.

     angry and embarrassed.

   • C.

     calm and reflective.

   • D.

     anxious and apologetic.

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3. Question 3

   Which detail best supports the idea that the narrator was nervous during the repair?

   • A.

     Her heart was pounding so loudly she thought the customer could hear it.

   • B.

     The customer wept when she heard the watch ticking.

   • C.

     She found the wheel lodged against the leg of the lamp.

   • D.

     The bell over the door jangled when the customer left.

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4. Question 4

   In the final paragraph, the narrator suggests that her grandfather had:

   • A.

     been waiting for the right time to hand over his tools.

   • B.

     decided only that afternoon to retire.

   • C.

     regretted allowing her to repair the watch.

   • D.

     hoped the customer would praise the narrator's work.

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5. The Translator's Dilemma

   Every translator of poetry eventually confronts the same uncomfortable truth: something will be lost. A poem is not merely a set of meanings arranged in lines. It is also a pattern of sounds, a rhythm, a set of associations that words carry in one language and not in another. When a translator carries a poem across a linguistic border, some of its baggage must be left behind.

   The question is what to leave. Some translators hold that fidelity to meaning is paramount. They produce versions that follow the original nearly word for word, often accompanied by notes explaining puns, allusions, and effects that could not survive the crossing. Readers of these translations can be confident that they are reading what the poet said, even if the result sounds stiff or flat in its new language.

   Others argue that such versions betray the poem in a deeper way. A poem that sings in its own language but plods in translation, they say, has lost the very quality that made it a poem. These translators take greater liberties. They may alter an image to preserve a rhyme or replace a culturally specific reference with one their readers will recognize. At their best, they produce works that feel alive; at their worst, they produce poems that belong more to the translator than to the poet.

   Between these positions lies a wide territory, and most working translators move across it depending on the poem in front of them. A short lyric that depends on a single, surprising image might be translated closely, because the image is what matters. A comic poem built on wordplay might demand a freer approach, since a literal version would leave readers puzzled about why anyone found it funny.

   Some translators have found a creative solution to the dilemma by publishing multiple versions of a single poem side by side: one literal, one freer, and sometimes the original as well. This practice invites readers into the translator's workshop, letting them see the choices that any translation requires. It also carries a quiet admission. No single version, it suggests, can be the poem; each is a reading of it, one perspective among many possible ones.

   Seen this way, the loss that haunts translation is also a kind of gift. Because no translation can be final, poems keep being translated, generation after generation, each version revealing something that the others missed.

   Question 5

   The central claim of the passage is that translating poetry:

   • A.

     is impossible and should not be attempted.

   • B.

     is easier when the translator ignores the original's sound.

   • C.

     should always follow the original word for word.

   • D.

     always involves loss and requires translators to make difficult choices.

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