Original: According to our law, her husband would have had the right to hand her divorce papers immediately(if he found evidence the wedding night that his bride was not a virgin). And she would have been the object of social disgrace. Today, young men’s attitude to virginity is changing(though no man would openly admit this), and is becoming quite relaxed and understanding; nevertheless, the Article in the law is still there in case any male chauvinist would like to make use of it(Shaaban 10)
Paraphrase 1: Law proclaims her husband could hand her divorce papers(if he discovered that his bride was not a virgin), and she would have been socially disgraced. Presently man’s attitude to virginity is changing(though none would admit), and is becoming more understanding; nevertheless, the law is still there for men’s use
Paraphrase 2: Law says her husband could divorce her(if it was discovered his bride wasn’t a virgin), and she would be socially disgraced. Today, most men’s attitude towards virginity is more understanding, though the law is still there for any man to use.
Paraphrase 3: Her husband could divorce her(if the bride wasn’t a virgin) and she would be socially disgraced. Today, men’s attitude towards virginity is more understanding, though they can still divorce at will.
Reflection: Overall, I think I did a decent job of paraphrasing. I chose to do this passage because I think it’s something that I think that we need to be aware of. A difficulty I had in shortening the same passage 3 times is making sure that it still carried the same message as the original passage, which is easy to lose sight of when you’re basically trimming the fat off of something 3 times over, it’s a little too easy to cut something important. Another cool effect of doing this is I think I actually understand the passage more than when I first read it. I guess paraphrasing also has the effect of making the meaning clearer to both the reader and the person doing the paraphrasing. I find this brief passage easier to understand than stanninger because I think Stanninger kinda loops around a lot, which confuses me, and this author(Shaaban) is a little bit more concise.
