Question 32

"The translation of the work I prefer . . ." [not "Translation of the work I prefer"] or "The version of the film I saw . . ." [not "Version of the film I saw . . . "] should tune the ear to "The Cleveland that Sarah Short Austen . . . remembers . . . ." Hence,

(B) is the correct version. The verb tense "remembers" is correct. She is still alive, so the Cleveland of her childhood still persists in memory.

(A) "The Cleveland" would make the sentence correct.

(C) "The city of Cleveland" is redundant; Cleveland is a city. That Sarah Short Austen was once a vice president of the National Urban Coalition places the reference to Cleveland in an American context; hence, designating Cleveland as a city is not required and sounds awkward.

The clause "who has been a former vice president . . ." is redundant; the word "former" does the work of placing the woman's vice presidency in the past. Moreover, the present perfect verb tense "has been" doesn't team up with "remembered"; there is verb tense disagreement The past perfect verb form "had been" should precede the verb "remembered".

(D) The faulty verb form "has remembered" appears again. The present perfect tense signals an action completed in the recent past and hence is inappropriate here.

Using "once" with "former" creates a redundancy [saying the same thing twice] producing ambiguity. Austen was either once a vice president or she was a former vice president. Can you be a former vice president more than once? Or can you cease to be a former vice president of the National Urban Coalition? In other words, can one say, "She was once a former vice president but she isn't a former vice president any longer."? It boggles the mind!

(E) This version undergoes a shift in emphasis or meaning. This Cleveland is no longer "the Cleveland" that Austen remem bers. She is described but her role in the sentence is attenuat ed.

Note the repetition of the "once former" error marring Version (D).