Grappling with the Statue of Liberty and Brexit in one English exam proved too much for more than 30,000 German school students, who are protesting in an online petition.

在一次英语考试中，关于自由女神像和“英国脱欧”的问题让3万名德国学生难以应付，以至于他们发起了一场网上抗议。

They say the texts they had to analyse were "unfair" -- stuffed with highly literary and outdated¹ vocabulary.

学生们表示，他们必须进行分析的文章很“不公平” --全是高度的文学性和过时的词汇。

Baden-Wurttemberg state officials, however, called the texts "appropriate" and defended the exam board.

然而，巴登符腾堡州的官员却表示，这些文章是“合适的”，并为考试委员会辩护。

They were part of the teenagers' crucial Abitur school-leaving exams. One task was to comment on two contrasting cartoons about Brexit, titled "Project Fantasy" and "The Realities".

这些文章是青少年关键的Abitur考试中的一部分。其中一项任务是就标题为《项目幻想》和《现实》的两副关于“英国脱欧”的漫画进行论述。

That required some current affairs knowledge, besides English comprehension.

除了对英语的理解之外，这还要求考生对一些时事知识的了解。

About 31,000 students sat the English exam in the south-west German state but the petition launched last month has collected more than 35,000 signatures.

这一位于德国西南部的联邦州约有31000名学生参加了此次英语考试，但上个月发布的请愿书收集到了超过35000个签名。

They ask the region's education authorities to adapt the marking system in light of the "unfair" difficulties posed by the texts -- and give some examples. This year's Abitur "is not comparable with those of previous years", they argue.

他们要求该地区的教育部门根据考试的“不公平”的难度调整评分系统，并给出范例。他们认为，今年的高考“与往年无法比拟”。