III. False friends

There are quite a few words you can come across in a newspaper which look identical to their Russian counterparts but, in fact, their meanings are poles apart.

Study the words below:

1. ACTUAL has nothing to do with АКТУАЛЬНЫЙ

Актуальные новости corresponds in English to topical news;

2. EXPERTISE does not mean ЭКСПЕРТИЗА

It is special skill or knowledge that is acquired by training, study or practice and should be translated as знания и опыт;

3. ACTING PRESIDENT is not ДЕЙСТВУЮЩИЙ ПРЕЗИДЕНТ. IT actually means ИСПОЛНЯЮЩИЙ ОБЯЗАННОСТИ ПРЕЗИДЕНТА.

ДЕЙСТВУЮЩИЙ ПРЕЗИДЕНТ is INCUMBENT;

4. A very PARTISAN speech/ newspaper means showing strong, often unreasonable support of a particular party, group, plan and can’t be translated as «партизанский».

5. PRETEND can never be translated as ПРЕТЕНДОВАТЬ. The right translation is ПРИТВОРЯТЬСЯ

Apart from those “look alike” words or phrases in two languages, culturally-bound items, should be taken special care of. Remember it never pays off to take words at face value.

1. Translate into Russian paying attention to the underlined words:

1. Officials from the two sides reached agreement at the 11^th hour after six years of haggling.

2. He is hurt by the perception that he is afraid to face his opponent. He is followed on the campaign trail by people dressed in chicken costumes.

3. The Prime Minister does not have to go to the country for another year.

2. Translate from Russian into English focusing on the confusables:

1. У нового исполняющего обязанности президента репутации человека независимого.

2. Проблема в том, что нередко у местных властей нет достаточного опыта выхода на внешний рынок.

3. Россия не претендует на получение одностороннего преимущества.

4. Самые актуальные новости обычно попадают на первые полосы газет.

5. Конгресс США обвинил Президента в том, что в решении государственных вопросов, он действует в интересах одной партии.

6. Когда Борис Ельцин делал операцию, Виктор Черномырдин исполнял его обязанности. Но уже через два дня действующий президент вернулся к активной деятельности.

7. В бесплатных газетах фактически нет новостей, там одна реклама.

8. Поскольку ситуация в стране была критической, премьер-министр вынужден был назначить всеобщие выборы.

9. Переговоры были трудными. Стороны смогли подписать соглашение в самый последний момент.

10. Коррупция – серьезная проблема для России. Нельзя делать вид, что она успешно решена.

SUPPLEMENT 2:

Read the piece from the novel The Fourth Estate by J.Archer. The extract describes a conference on arranging the layout of the paper. Pay attention to the words underlined.

When Townsend stepped off the plane at Adelaide the following morning, the first thing he noticed as he entered the arrivals hall was that the Messenger was placed above the Gazette in the newspaper rack. He dropped his bags and switched the papers round, so that the Gazette was on top, then purchased a copy of both.

While he stood in line waiting for a taxi, he noted that of the 73 people who walked out of the airport, 12 were carrying the Messenger while only 7 had the Gazette. As the taxi drove him into the city, he wrote down these findings on the back of his ticket, with the intention of briefing Frank Bailey, the editor of the Gazette, as soon as he reached the office. He spent the rest of the journey flicking through both papers, and had to admit that the Messenger was a more interesting read. However, he didn’t feel that was an opinion he could express on his first day in town.

Townsend was dropped outside the offices of the Gazette. He left his bags in reception and took the lift to the third floor. No one gave him a second look as he headed through the rows of journalists seated at their desks, tapping away on their typewriters. Without knocking on the editor’s door, he walked straight into the morning conference.

A surprised Frank Bailey rose from behind his desk, held out his hand and said, “Keith, it’s great to see you after all this time.”

“And it’s good to see you,” said Townsend.

“We weren’t expecting you until tomorrow.” Bailey turned to face the horseshoe of journalists seated round his desk. “This is Sir Graham’s son, Keith, who will be taking over from his father as publisher. Those of you who have been around a few years will remember when he was last here as …” Frank hesitated.

“As my father’s son,” said Townsend.

The comment was greeted with a ripple of laughter.

“Please, carry on as if I weren’t here,” said Townsend. “I don’t intend to be the sort of publisher who interferes with editorial decisions.” He walked over to the corner of the room, sat on the window ledge and watched as Bailey continued to conduct the morning conference. He hadn’t lost any of his skills, or, it seemed, his desire to use the paper to campaign on behalf of any underdog he felt was getting a rough deal.

“Right, what’s looking like the lead story tomorrow?” he asked. Three hands shot up.

“Dave,” said the editor, pointing a pencil at the chief crime reporter. “Let’s hear your bid.”

“It looks as if we might get a verdict on the Sammy Taylor trial today. The judge is expected to finish his summing-up later this afternoon.”

“If it is a guilty verdict, I’ll give the front page over to it and write a leader on the travesty of justice any Aboriginal can expect in our courts. Is the courthouse still being picketed by Abo protesters?”

“Sure is. It’s become a night-and-day vigil. They’ve taken to sleeping on the pavement since we published those pictures of their leaders being dragged off by the police.”

“Right, if we get a verdict today, and it’s guilty, you get the front page, Jane,” he said, turning to the features editor. “I’ll need a thousand words on Abo’s rights and how disgracefully this trial has been conducted. Travesty of justice, racial prejudice, you know, the sort of thing I want.”

“What if the jury decides he’s not guilty?” asked Dave.

“In that unlikely event, you get the right-hand column on the front page and Jane can give me 500 words for page seven on the strength of the jury syste,, Australia at last coming out of the dark ages, etc., etc.”

Bailey turned his attention to the other side of the room, and pointed his pencil at a woman whose hand has remained up. “Maureen,” he said.

“We may have a mystery illness at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. Three young children have died in the last 10 days and the hospital’s chief administrator, Gyles Dunn, is refusing to make a statement of any kind, however hard I push him.”

“Are all the children local?”

“Yep,” replied Maureen. “They all come from the Port Adelaide area.”

“Ages?”

“Four, three, and four. Two girls, one boy.”

“Right get hold of their parents, especially the mothers. I want pictures, history of the families, everything you can find about them. Try and discover if the families have any connection with each other, however remote. Are they related? Do they know each other or work at the same place? Do they have any shared interests, however remote, that could just connect the three cases? And I want some sort of statement out of Gyles Dunn, even if it’s ‘No comment.’”

Maureen gave Bailey a quick nod before he turned his attention to the picture editor. “Get me a picture of Dunn looking harassed that will be good enough to put on the front page.” You’ll have the front-page lead, Maureen, if the Taylor verdict is not guilty, otherwise I’ll give you page four with a possible run-on to page five. Try and get pictures of all three children. Family albums is what I’m after – happy, healthy children, preferably on holiday. And I want you to get inside that hospital. If Dunn still refuses to say anything, find someone who will. A doctor, a nurse, even a porter, but make sure the statement is either witnessed or recorded. I don’t want another fiasco like the one we had last month with that Mrs. Kendal and her complaints against the fire brigade. And Dave,” the editor said, turning his attention back to the chief crime reporter, “I’ll need to know as soon as possible if the verdict on Taylor is likely to be held up, so we can get to work on the layout of the front page. Anyone else got anything to offer?”

“Thomas Playford will be making what’s promised to be an important statement at 11 o’clock this morning,” said Jim West, a political reporter. Groans went up the room.

“I’m not interested,” said Frank, “unless he’s going to announce his resignation. If it’s the usual photo call and public relations exercise, producing more bogus figures about what he is supposed to have achieved for the local community, relegate it to a single column on page eleven. Sport, Harry?”

A rather overweight man, seated in the corner opposite Townsend, blinked and turned to a young associate who sat behind him. The young man whispered in his ear.

“Oh, yes,” the sports editor said. “Some time today the selectors will be announcing our team for the first Test against England, starting on Thursday.”

“Are there likely to be any Adelaide lads in the side?”

Townsend sat through the hour-long conference but didn’t say anything, despite feeling that several questions had been left unanswered. When the conference finally broke up, he waited until all the journalists had left before he handed Frank the notes he had written earlier in the back of the taxi. The editor glanced at the scribbled figures, and promised he would study them more carefully just as soon as he had a minute. Without thinking, he deposited them in his out tray.

SUPPLEMENT 3:

SELF-STUDY SECTION:

TEXT 1: WELL READ

Jeff Bezos, Amazon’s boss, pays attention to symbolism. He named his e-commerce company after the world’s largest river to suggest a flood of books and other products. He named Amazon’s e-book reader, launched in 2007, the Kindle to suggest that it would spark a fire. This week he unveiled the Kindle 2, an improved version for the same $359. Assisting him was Stephen King, a popular author who has written a novella that will be available only on the device. The Kindle 2, Mr. Bezos means to say, is about preserving a great tradition of book reading and improving it, not about replacing it.

In many ways this is true. The Kindle is an unusual gadget in that it does not obviously target young people. Instead it appeals to passionate readers who want no fiddling with cables (the Kindle works without a computer) or complicated pricing plans (Kindle users pay to buy books and other content, but do not have to pay wireless-subscription fees). It is, in short, perfect for older people. The Kindle is a surprisingly “conservative” device, so it is an additional distribution channel.

Steve Kessel, a member of Amazon’s Kindle team, says that Kindle owners seem to read more. “It’s the convenience – they think of a book and can be reading it within 60 seconds,” he says thanks to the instant wireless downloads, and “they’re now carrying all their books around with them all the time.” The Kindle 2 can hold about 1,500 books, and one battery charge allows two weeks’ reading. And since the screen is not backlit but imitates real ink and paper, Kindle owners can read for hours without straining their eyes.

So far, says Mr. Kessel, this does not seem to spell the end of paper books, since Kindle users buy just as many bound books as before, so that their total consumption of books goes up by 2.6 times. That may change as more titles become available. More importantly, the Kindle and similar devices made by Sony and others represent only one side of the evolving e-reader market. They are for those who are eager to read since paying $359 for a device makes sense only if you read quite a lot of books, newspapers of magazines on it.

For everybody else, such as infrequent readers and the young, the mobile phone can become the preferred e-reader. A popular software application on Apple’s iPhone, called Stanza, already turns that device into a book reader, with one-handed page turning that is ideal for public transport.

It is now only a matter of time until absolutely all books become available, and properly formatted, for mobile phones. Google, an internet giant that has been scanning and digitizing books for inclusion in its search engine, now offers thousands of books that are in the public domain free on mobile phones. It seems likely that, eventually, only books that have value as souvenirs, gifts or artefacts will remain bound in paper.

Newspapers and magazines are on the same trajectory. Their paper editions are in decline in most of the developed world, as readers opt for the web versions on their computers and laptops, or on smart-phones, such as the iPhone. The Kindle could accelerate that shift since it also lets users subscribe to news publications, which are automatically delivered.

All this has led to a new phrase in the newspaper industries: is this the “iPod moment?” It is, of course, an analogy. On the one hand, the iPod and its associated iTunes store opened up a new market for legal digital music downloads. On the other hand, the iPod accelerated the decline in CD sales and shifted power from record labels to Apple. Will the Kindle similarly put Amazon in a dominant position, while weakening publishers?

This is unlikely. Books, says John Makinson, the boss of Penguin Group, are different from music. Sales of CDs were harmed because iPod users could “unbundle” the albums that record labels had forced on them, and downloaded only the songs they wanted. By contrast, there is no obvious reason to unbundle narrative books into individual chapters or paragraphs. A book sold via a Kindle thus has no marginal cost, but adds revenues. Another difference is that music was being widely pirated before Apple made legal downloads attractive. There is no such crisis in the book business.

Nor is Amazon likely to achieve anything near Apple’s power over the music industry. True, when a newspaper or a magazine reader drops his paper for a Kindle subscription, he enters a billing relationship with Amazon rather than the publisher. (Neither Amazon nor its partners will reveal how the revenue is split). But for record labels, Apple was the only viable and legal route. For the news industry, says Craig McKinnis at USA Today, a large American daily, the Kindle is “just one among many new distribution channels, from web to mobile-phone applications to e-readers”. What happened in music “I cannot imagine taking place” in news, he says.

Answer the following questions:

1. What kind of business is Amazon involved in? What reasons for its success can you think of?

2. Why does the first paragraph mention symbolism?

3. What are the features of the Kindle?

4. Why does the author draw a parallel between the Kindle and iPod?

5. Does the author believe that the effect of the Kindle on the publishers will be similar to the effect of iPod on record labels?

6. Do you tend to agree with the author?

Translate the paragraphs in italics.

TEXT 2: THE PROMISCUITY PROBLEM

More bad news for the embattled newspaper business The decision to give away newspaper content free online is increasingly viewed as the business equivalent of Eve’s decision to munch on an apple. But any proprietor who wants to undo this error has a problem. If one newspaper starts charging, readers may migrate to those that remain free. If, on the other hand, a lot of papers begin charging at the same time, readers might be jostled into paying. This plan has always seemed optimistic. A study released this week suggests it may be completely wrongheaded.

Oliver & Ohlbaum, a media consultancy, began by asking people what newspaper they tended to read and whether or not they subscribed to it (most get their papers from shops). Then they quizzed readers about where they went for news on the internet. The results were consistent: when it comes to online news, Britons are shamelessly promiscuous.

The theory underlying most papers’ online strategies is that people will buy a favourite newspaper and then go to its website for breaking news and extras such as blogs. But fans of the Daily Telegraph, for example, the most popular quality daily paper, got just 8% of their online news from its website. They spent twice as much time visiting the BBC’s news website and more than twice as much reading other quality papers. Most surprising, they were more likely to read tabloid papers like the Sun and the Daily Mirror online than their own favourite paper. Others were no more loyal. Sun readers, for example, visited the websites of quality newspapers about as often as they did those of tabloids, including their own Sun.

Another surprise is how little readers rely on online news aggregators such as Yahoo! News and Google News. The latter in particular has been accused of stealing newspapers’ content and undermining their attempts to charge for it. On December 1st Google offered to let publishers who want to charge for news restrict traffic to five articles per reader, per day. This week’s study suggests that the olive branch may be almost irrelevant. Readers do not need aggregators to point them to news sources, and they graze so widely that few would reach the five-article limit.

The survey also contained devastating news for those publishers hoping to co-ordinate attempts to charge. When Guardian readers were asked whether they would pay £2 a month to read their favourite paper online, 26% said yes. But if all newspapers charged? The proportion prepared to pay for the Guardian might have been expected to rise. Instead it fell to 16%. This seems odd, until one considers readers’ promiscuity. Faced with having to spend rather a lot to keep snacking from a wide variety of news sources, they protested. The questions are hypothetical, and people may react differently when and if pay walls actually go up. But this will hardly encourage newspaper owners.

Answer the following questions:

1. Why does the first paragraph mention Eve? Why does the author use the allusion to the Bible to describe the media business of today?

2. What dilemma does every media proprietor of today have to face?

3. What is the theory related to the Internet preferences of readers? Is it proven by the reality?

4. Will it be profitable for media outlets to charge for online content? What examples and what sources does the article cite?

Translate the paragraphs in italics.

TEXT 3: HIGH WIRES

With newspapers in crisis, newswires may learn to live without them WHERE does news come from? The answer, much of the time, is from newswires. Many of the stories in newspapers, on television, radio and online are based on dispatches filed by the big news agencies. The biggest international newswires, Associated Press (AP) and Reuters, date back to the expansion of the telegraph in the mid-19th century, when rapid newsgathering first became possible. The agencies have usually been wholesalers of news; newspapers, broadcasters and websites act as retailers, repackaging and selling news to consumers alongside material generated in-house.

Some, such as AP (a co-operative owned by its subscribers) and the state-backed French News Agency (AFP), have stuck to that model. But Reuters, like the Dow Jones newswire (which grew out of the Wall Street Journal), has developed a huge business providing information to financial-services firms, for which rapid, accurate news is highly valuable. A more recent arrival, Bloomberg, started out as a provider of such information but has turned into a news agency as well, creating a worldwide network of bureaus and syndicating stories to newspapers.

The financial crisis is taking a terrible toll on both financial-services firms and newspapers, so you might expect the news agencies that serve them to be in trouble too. Not so. Christoph Pleitgen, a senior Reuters executive, says the big newswires have been staffing up in the past year. The Journal’s owner, News Corp, announced job cuts at the newspaper earlier this month, but said that the Dow Jones newswire was adding journalists at its bureaus, especially in India. Likewise, Bloomberg’s recent announcement of around 190 job cuts at a foreign-language television venture got more attention than its promise to create 1,000 jobs elsewhere, including in its news bureaus. And CNN, a television-news network, plans to set up a new international agency to rival AP and Reuters.

A few struggling newspaper groups have stopped subscribing to newswires. Many others, having cut their own newsrooms, have become more dependent than ever on regurgitating agency copy. The proliferation of news websites, hungry for content, but lacking staff to produce it themselves, has also boosted the agencies. Last year printed newspapers contributed only 25% of AP’s revenues, says its boss, Tom Curley, down from 55% in 1985. Mr Pleitgen says that in developing regions, such as the Gulf, new television stations, websites and even newspapers are springing up, compensating for the newswires’ loss of customers elsewhere.

But if newswires are thriving and newspapers are making ever more use of wire copy, why don’t the wire services supply news direct to the consumer? The risk that newspapers will be disintermediated is noted in a new report by, of all people, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University. In some ways, it is already happening. Reuters and Bloomberg offer their top stories direct to consumers on advertising-financed websites.

And as more people consume news via smart-phones and other mobile devices, the newswires are providing it there, too. Norman Pearlstine, a senior Bloomberg executive, says the firm’s application for the Apple iPhone has been downloaded over a million times. Its service is free “for now”. AP, which is owned by its main subscribers, is treading carefully: it has struck deals with 1,200 American newspapers to create mobile websites, for which AP provides national and international news and they provide local news.

Nobody yet knows which business model, if any, will work for mobile news. Mr Pearlstine notes that mobile users happily pay for a new ringtone, so why not for news? It is unclear how good news agencies will be at marketing direct to consumers. But as they continue building their worldwide news bureaus and providing more comprehensive coverage, they may be more likely to survive in the long term than those newspapers which, through constant rounds of cuts, risk becoming ever less distinctive.

Answer the following questions:

1. What are newswires? How many of them are mentioned in the text? What do you learn from the text on their history and type of business?

2. How was the newswire segment affected by the crisis? (Discuss the staff policy and the financial performance).

3. Have there been precedents of newswires offering news directly to consumers? If yes, what are they? Why hasn’t this technique been made universal?

4. Is the business model of delivering news to mobile phones viable, in the author’s view? Would you pay for such a service?

Translate the paragraphs in italics.

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