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Wed 21 Jun, 2017 03:23 am
The text below is an except of a matriculation of a really famous Japanese university held years ago; the then applicants were required to translate it into Japanese.
Albeit it is not difficult to fulfill the task itself, I got the impression that though the author would have tried to make his text appear refined, what he did was just to make it inessentially tangled syntactically
and not sophisticated enough to have a certain aura which a truly urbane writer like Irving, Austen, and Gibbon had.
I want to hear your views.
"Some people are so changed by their life's experience that in old age they behave in completely unexpected ways. Many of us know elderly men and women who no longer act as we have come to expect them to act. I am not talking here about victims of senile dementia. In the examples I am talking of the person continues to behave in what most people would agree is a normal manner, but one so remote from his old self that he appears, to those who know him, to be someone else entirely."
@Salmagundi1027,
I'm going to go with pretentious.
It's a wonderfully and clearly stated view that would be difficult to understand--I imagine--if you haven't reached old age.
@Salmagundi1027,
Trivial, uninteresting, vague...
@Salmagundi1027,
I think it's great, but I might change "the examples I am talking of" to
"The examples I refer to"
@Salmagundi1027,
A rare treat to taste Irving, Austen, and Gibbon sandwiched twixt two egg salad salmagundis.
Sounds like a quote from an informal speech, not written text.
@Salmagundi1027,
It seems to me that your text is good. Since it is not readable as human-written text. I think this is an important characteristic for a writer.
How would I know? I don't even speak English, In fact, I happen to be looking for a peng girl to teach me English.
@Salmagundi1027,
interesting insight of old age