Answer from cs61c-aq (Anjali Jagannatha Koppal 16454392) for Question 1
Comments are not translated to assembly language code because their sole purpose is to communicate with the programmer; they are not to be compiled.

also, i think since MIPS is only considered with the memory location/register that contains a variable, it is unconcerned with the 'type' of the variable- so declarations like 'int', 'float' are not directly translated.