Speech of Mrs Jones (Soc.) at the Plenary Session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, 1999
President (as interpreted by the female interpreter in the English booth): I now give the floor to Mrs Jones from the United Kingdom and she will be speaking on behalf of the Socialist Group.
Mrs Jones, you have the floor.
Mrs. Jones: Thank you, Mr President.
T
he
underrepresentation of women in political life should be of great
concern to everybody in this Assembly. After all, the Council of
Europe was set up, amongst other things to promote democracy. I would
first of all like to start off by congratulating Mr Staes on his
comprehensive and excellent report. It is a report, which the
Socialist Group welcomes and broadly supports. Report rightly
highlights the barriers which women face when they are entering
political life. And there’s ample evidence for this. And the
Rapporteur in his introduction spoke about the many conferences and
seminars and debates that we have. As we know, it’s the structure
of political parties, the conventions within Parliaments. But also it
is the restraints and constraints of domestic and personal life where
women are still expected to do the majority of the caring for
dependent relatives. And myself – it took me twenty years to enter
Parliament in the United Kingdom and I personally think we certainly
need equality in political life, but, perhaps, we could with a little
bit of
parity
at
home as well.
I
think the argument is no longer whether women are capable of holding
down jobs in political life. Of course, we are! We have demonstrated
that. So if you want that argument is down
and out of the way,
the issue is how do we now overcome
these barriers?
Report makes it clear that we do need to adopt measures that need to
be put in place. Parity
is
not
gonna happen just by magic. And, I think, there is a historical
lesson here, which we need to remember.
In most established western democracies women did not get the vote by accident. Men didn’t suddenly wake up one morning in 1918 in the United Kingdom and say: “Goodness! We’ve forgotten to give women the vote”. Women got the vote in the United Kingdom at the turn of the century because of our long heartfelt campaign. And it’s been that way in most democracies and there’s a lesson to be learnt here. We are only going to get equal representation in political life if we campaign and work at it.
http://www.coe.int
4.3 Rendering of the “evaluative component” of messages in interpreting
Evaluative components may play different roles in the semantic structure of utterances. If they are parts of the theme they may often be redundant and omitted in interpreting, e.g. The immense advances in science and technology open up great opportunities for the rapid development of our human and material resources – [...] досягнення у галузі науки та техніки забезпечують нам сьогодні можливість швидко розвивати людські та матеріальні ресурси. Omission of the evaluative adjective величезні in interpreting does not damage the sense of the utterance and its communicative effect.
However, if the evaluative component is placed in the rheme of the utterance, it becomes a part of the “informational focus” and its omission may result in distortions in interpretation, e.g. We have always attached considerable importance to the development of self-government – Ми завжди приділяли значну увагу розвитку самоврядування. Omission of the evaluative adjectives значну, велику would have resulted in а certain loss of the sense – evaluation, in this particular case.
In terms of semantic structure evaluative phrases may be classified into:
Phrases in which the evaluative component is included in the attribute and the antecedent (антецедент) either contains weak evaluation or no evaluation at all:
ATTRIBUTE: evaluation positive |
ATTRIBUTE: evaluation negative |
meaningful concept reliable means priority measures successful outcome |
difficult assignment adverse effect tragic results explosive situation |
Phrases in which the evaluative component is included in the antecedent and the attribute is rather an intensifier of quality the meaning of which is equal to the generic adverb “very”:
ANTECEDENT: evaluation positive |
ANTECEDENT: evaluation negative |
positive assurance meaningful co-operation clear guidelines durable peace |
significant deterioration fruitless expenditures tremendous waste deep regret |
Omission of the evaluative attribute in rendering of the phrases of the first type will result in considerable losses of meaning, however, the evaluative attribute may be easily omitted in translation of the phrases of the second type where evaluation is “embedded” in the antecedent.