II. Résumé making (text compression).

Listen to the recorded text, make notes and write a résumé in Russian /Ukrainian /English. (reduce the text to the core, then develop it back without consulting the text).

Translate into English using text compression (omit redundant words, convert nominative structure into verbal, use noun clusters etc.)

First, do it in writing, then orally, observe transformations in translation.

III. Text development.

Develop a text from the given core (first do it in one language in writing, then with interpretation –orally).

IV. Sight translation practice.

Pay attention to precision information (proper names, geographical names, dates) and correct word order. Suggest background information required for a proper translation of the text.

V. Check yourself (your translation)against the pattern translation version.

VI. Listen to the recorded text and practise consecutive interpreting.

Giacomo Giovanni Casanova

(1725–1798)

Italian writer, adventure-seeker, seducer

The biography of this person is obscure and confusing. Making hints of his mysterious noble origin, he called himself either Count Farussi or the Chevalier de Seingalt. This adventurer introduced himself as a traveller, a priest, a diplomat, a military officer, a scientist and in his memoirs he openly told the things other people preferred to conceal.

Our contemporaries imagine Casanova as a person combining the features of a real man and a generalized character of a loving man.

Very little is known about the life of Giacomo Giovanni Casanova. He was born in Venice in 1725. It seemed that the birth itself left an imprint on his whole life: it is supposed that Giacomo was the fruit of adultery of a beautiful aristocrat and a theatre owner. Casanova inherited the refined manners of his French mother and the vehement blood of his Italian father. Giacomo received perfect education, he had a remarkable memory and a huge thirst for knowledge.

A further real life of Giacomo Casanova is overshadowed with myths, quite often created by himself.

The first myth: Casanova, a great seducer.

Describing his love affairs during 40 years of his life Casanova uses the names of 116 women. Is it too many for a bachelor travelling all over Europe? His meticulous biographers calculated that on the average he had had three beloved women a year and it was not something extraordinary for the manners and customs of the 18th century. Casanova endowed with his love noble women, poor peasants and prostitutes. However, he was not a «professional» seducer. He was more of a womanizer and could not resist any woman. «Four-fifth of the pleasure meant for me giving some happiness to women», Casanova wrote frankly in his memoirs. His love affairs never ended up with a wedding; above all he valued his freedom. He loved some women only for a night, others – all his life.

Being an 18-year-old youth he made an acquaintance with a certain Henrietta. Giacomo was head over heels in love with her, and she reciprocated him. They travelled together around Europe but one day Henrietta left the café in Geneva having written on the window glass an inscription cut with a sharp edge of a diamond: «You will forget Henrietta». In 13 eventful years having found himself in the same Geneva café, Casanova saw the familiar inscription and acknowledged that he was unworthy of his former sweetheart. He was 35 but it seemed that his life came to an end. Giacomo felt lonely and dispirited. And when many years after that he fell seriously ill, a caring nurse who was sent by Henrietta living in the neighbouring estate was watching by his sick bed.

The second myth presents Giacomo Casanova as audacious adventurer and a spy.

In 1755 he was accused of blasphemy for eating meat during the Lent. Casanova was taken into custody in the Doge»s palace in Venice. The roof of the palace was covered with lead slabs. It is incredible but in a year Giacomo managed an extraordinary escape having made a hole in the roof. Afterwards, he told about this adventure in the book «The History of My Escape».

Being a well-educated and gifted person, Casanova tried himself in many areas. In Paris he founded a factory producing exquisite drawings printed on silk fabrics but soon he went bankrupt.

In Venice the adventurer carried out secret missions of the Naval Ministry.

The affable Casanova was received by notable figures of Europe. Frederick the Great, the king of Prussia, granted an audience to him. In the Royal library Casanova was translating Homer’s «The Illiad», and he considered those eight days spent on the translation to be among the happiest days in his life.

One more date which is officially registered: on December 15, 1764 Casanova arrived in St. Petersburg. He visited Tsarskoye Selo, Petergoff and Kronstadt. But Catherine the Great did not take a fancy to him and soon he returned to Germany.

Years passed and Casanova continued to wander around Austria, Holland and France. In Bohemia (The Czech Republic) he got aсquainted with Count Joseph Karl von Waldstein who offered him the position of the librarian in his Castle of Dux. There Giacomo spent the last 13 years of his life.

A daring and attractive favourite of women turned into a sick and always grumbling old man. His body was dying but his mind did not want to put up with death. And Casanova started writing. He worked 13 hours a day and wrote 42 books. Some critics confirmed the verissimilitude of the events described but others called him «the most shameless lier in the world literature».

So the third myth about Casanova the writer appeared.

The most famous work of Casanova is his 12-volume «History of my Life», which according to him, was written «not for the glory but as a satire of myself». He was not afraid of shocking the reader by his excessive frankness. His memoirs brought him the posthumous glory of a great seducer.

Giacomo Casanova died in 1798. He is buried in the castle of Dux but nobody knows where exactly his grave is. The name of Casanova has become a common name. A genius lover, a brilliant adventurer, a secret agent of the Inquisition – this man-myth will evoke admiration and curiosity of the descendants.