Word of the day - 'sophistic'

so·phis·tic adj.(courtesy of www.dictionary.com)

(1) Of, relating to, or characteristic of sophists.

Well that's just brilliant, thank you.

(2) Apparently sound but really fallacious; specious: sophistic refutations.

Thats much better.

So why am I interested in learning what sophistic means? Well I've just found out that I have to sit an entrance exam - as if three exams, two interviews and a seven page thesis proposal wasn't enough. Now I have to do two exams and an interview (in addition to the one I did the other day)...

One of the two exams is a translation exam - I have to translate a passage from English into Japanese. This is part of the English passage from the 2002 entrance exam:

The world depicted by Thucydides is a ruthless world, in which the strong openly assert and pitilessly exercise their right to rule over the weak. Some historians draw from this the inference that the historian himself held the same values which obtain in the world which he portrays; that under sophistic influence he had come to believe in the right of the stronger; that he regarded Athenian imperialism with wholehearted approval, and deplored only the tactical mistakes which after the death Pericles led to its collapse.

What the hell??? I'm supposed to be studying law!!! I can't even pronounce these names, much less know how to write them in Japanese...much less translate the whole passage into Japanese!!!

With all the horror of having to sit the entrance exam in Japanese, the Law Faculty thought it best to supply me with a tutor. The poor bastard doesn't know what he's gotten himself into. He does get paid - but it's a pretty poor sum of money by Japanese standards. Apparently it's a 6 month assignment, and after I told him all the topics I wanted to cover, he looked at me with pain in his eyes, and I can see that he won't want to continue with another 6 month tenure - he seemed to think that this would be easy money...

For future reference, you may want to know that the Japanese translation of 'sophistic' is kiben.