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.

Friedrich Nietzsche

(1844–1900)

a German philosopher

He, a philosopher who invented a «superman», was considered for a long time to be an instigator of amorality, cruelty, war, violence and they imagined him as a self-confident person possessed by megalomania. But his friends described Friedrich Nietzsche as follows: «One could easily not notice him, there was little attractiveness in his face… He had a habit of speaking softly, a careful concentrated way of walking, calm features… He was conspicuous for politeness, almost female tenderness, and a permanently equable temper. He liked the refined manners of treating others, and he impressed his acquaintances by ceremoniousness».

A German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born in 1844 into a pastor’s family who descended from the Polish nobility. At the age of six Friedrich was sent to a school for boys in the town of Naumburg, then to the cathedral gymnasium. A reserved and taciturn boy, he felt lonely and uncomfortable among his peers. His classmates called Fritz «a little pastor» and constantly made fun of his tender manners, polite tone and his non-childish reasonableness.

His relationships with the pupils of the prestigious boarding school «Schulpforte» where Nietzsche was admitted to as a gifted pupil at the age of 14, did not develop. They were irritated by Friedrich’s intellectual superiority, who did not only compose verses and music but was also interested in history and philosophy. At 18, Nietzsche wrote his first philosophical-ethical essays: «Fatum and History» and «Freedom and Fatum».

At the age of 20 Friedrich Nietzsche entered the theology department of Bonn University but in a year he changed it for the philology department and continued his studies in Leipzig. Once he came across the work of Schopenhauer «The World as Will and Imagination». The philosopher’s disdain for people with their petty worries and selfish interests shocked Friedrich enough to suffer from insomnia for two weeks.

At 23 Nietzsche was called up for military service. But soon after a serious trauma he received when falling down off the horse Friedrich returned to his studies. His scientific career was impetuous. In a year the University of Basel invited him to teach classical philosophy having awarded him with a Ph.D. degree without the dissertation presentation.

In 1870, when the Franco-Prussian war broke out, Nietzsche decided to volunteer to the front but the neutral Swiss authorities allowed him only a service in the hospital. There he caught diphtheria and dysentery, survived by miracle and freed himself from patriotism for good.

On his return to the University Friedrich combined teaching with his work on the first large philosophical essay «The Birth of Tragedy out of the Spirit of Music». In five years his health began to deteriorate sharply. In 1879, worn out and half blind, Nietzsche who hardly reached the age of 35asked for resignation. For the next ten years he was wandering about cheap holiday hotels: in summer he was staying in Switzerland while in winter – in Northern Italy, where suffering from insomnia and headaches he wrote his essays till his sore eyes failed. It was the time when his most significant philosophical works «Confused Thoughts and Expressions», «Merry Science», «The Dawn» came out one after another.

His hopes for personal happiness did not come true. Having met Lu von Salome, a 20-year-old daughter of a Russian general, he decided to marry her. But this decision led to a serious misunderstanding with his mother and sister as they considered his choice to be «absolutely immoral».

In 1888 Nietzsche got rid of the insomnia and headaches as well as the attacks of nausea that had tormented him for fifteen years. But he started accomplishing inexplicable deeds: he broke off with his old friends, he created a fictitious autobiography. In January 1889 after a stroke he went insane. The disease was taking a rough course: by day and night Friedrich sang songs, cried out incoherent words, jumped and bleated like a goat; he slept on the floor by the bed and had a voracious appetite. Only his musical gift did not betray him: when he was seated at the piano the keys under his hands did not produce a single false note. At the end of 1900 he contracted pneumonia and died peacefully in an Italian mental hospital in Turin.

Not only Nietzsche»s life but also the fate of his legacy were tragic. After Friedrich»s death his sister published his works having totally distorted the content. Militarists proclaimed Nietzsche their philosopher. His works were studied at German gymnasia and young men who were going to the front had the work «As Zaratustra Said» by Nietzsche next to the Bible and «Faust» by Goethe. In the 1930-s the philosopher was turned into an idol of Nazism; they forgot that speaking about a «superman» Nietzsche meant not a dictator but a thinker and artist squeezing drop by drop the slavish morality out of himself. And his phrase «push the falling one» is not about relationships between people but about the fall of epochs, states, traditions and customs, about everything that becomes incapable of living and has to be pushed towards an abyss otherwise the process of decay will drag on.

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