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According to one influential school of anthropology, the symbolic univ
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07 Jun 2026, 08:17
07 Jun 2026, 08:17
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15% (00:34) correct
85% (00:58) wrong based on 20 sessions
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According to one influential school of anthropology, the symbolic universes of widely separated cultures possess conceptual foundations so radically ________ that no genuine translation between them can ever be fully achieved; each must be grasped exclusively from within its own frame of reference.
| Blank (i) |
|---|
| A.heterogeneous |
| B.incommensurable |
| C.insular | D.ineffable | E.untranslatable |
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Re: According to one influential school of anthropology, the symbolic univ
[#permalink]
09 Jun 2026, 04:00
09 Jun 2026, 04:00
Expert Reply
The key to this Text Completion is the clause after the semicolon:
"no genuine translation between them can ever be fully achieved; each must be grasped exclusively from within its own frame of reference."
This tells us the conceptual foundations are so fundamentally different that they cannot be measured against each other or fully translated.
- (A) heterogeneous means "diverse," but it doesn't capture the impossibility of translation.
- (B) incommensurable means "having no common standard of measurement" - this matches the idea perfectly.
- (C) insular means "isolated" or "narrow-minded," not directly about untranslatability.
- (D) ineffable means "too great to be expressed in words," which is about indescribability, not cross-cultural comparison.
- (E) untranslatable might seem tempting, but the sentence says "so radically _______ that no genuine translation ... can ever be fully achieved" - the blank must be the reason for untranslatability, not the synonym for it.
Correct answer: B. incommensurable.
"no genuine translation between them can ever be fully achieved; each must be grasped exclusively from within its own frame of reference."
This tells us the conceptual foundations are so fundamentally different that they cannot be measured against each other or fully translated.
- (A) heterogeneous means "diverse," but it doesn't capture the impossibility of translation.
- (B) incommensurable means "having no common standard of measurement" - this matches the idea perfectly.
- (C) insular means "isolated" or "narrow-minded," not directly about untranslatability.
- (D) ineffable means "too great to be expressed in words," which is about indescribability, not cross-cultural comparison.
- (E) untranslatable might seem tempting, but the sentence says "so radically _______ that no genuine translation ... can ever be fully achieved" - the blank must be the reason for untranslatability, not the synonym for it.
Correct answer: B. incommensurable.
gmatclubot
Re: According to one influential school of anthropology, the symbolic univ [#permalink]
09 Jun 2026, 04:00
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