Exercises

TASK 1. Sort out the words and collocations to make two lists: one denoting objects, people and phenomena pertaining to British (English) culture, the other – to American culture. Explain what each of them means, setting it in a proper historical, political, and societal context.

Privy Council, melting pot, “Mayflower”, Harlem, Samaritans, McCarthyism, Founding Fathers, Pilgrims, levelers and diggers, WASP, Gettysburg Address, Chartists, Empire State Building, Royal Society, abolitionists, New Deal, “Trick or Treat”, salad bowl, Luddites, Jim Crow, “Utopia”, RAND Corporation, Stonehenge, Wounded Knee, Lord-Protector, the Battle of Hastings, carpet-beggers, Declaration of Independence, Glorious Revolution, Ku Klux Klan, Habeas Corpus, Gold Rush, Lord Chancellor, Heathrow, Christie’s.

²

TASK 2. Do the following dates ring the bell?

1. Historical and political events involving: 1. England/Britain/the UK; 2. America/the USA; 3. Russia/the USSR.

2. 1066; 1215; 1666; 1707; 1801; 1812-1814; 1815; 1973

3. 1492; December 16, 1773; 1775-1781; 1776; 1787; 1791; 1812-1814; 1861-1865; 1929-1932; December 7, 1941; July 21, 1969; 1963, 1972-1974.

4. 1812; 1861; 1917; April 12, 1961; 1979; 1986; 1991.

B. Red-letter days/holidays celebrated: 1. internationally, 2. in the UK; 3. in the USA; 4. in Russia.

1. October 24 (since 1945); December 10 (since 1948); December 25; January 7; June 1; September 1.

2. The first Sunday after the first full moon falling on or after March 21; the Second Sunday in May; the third Sunday in June; October 31, November 11 and the first Sunday after it; December 26.

3. The Fourth of July; the first Monday in September; October 12; February 22; the fourth Thursday in November.

4. February 23; March 8; May 1; May 9; June 12; November 7; December 12.

TASK 3. Can you attribute the slogans and mottoes given below? What ideas and people stand behind them? What times are they associated with?

A We shall overcome. Better be active today than radioactive tomorrow. Make love, not war. Make sex, not MX. Look for a red under every bed. Better be dead than red. Better red than dead. All the way. With LBJ. I like Ike. On the raft with Taft. Farms, not arms. Think globally, act locally. People Before Profit. Stop the greedy, help the needy. Black is beautiful. All for one and one for all. Everyone for himself and the devil take the hindermost. All the news that’s fit to print. United we stand, divided we fall. E pluribus unum. In God we trust. Keep up with the Joneses. “to serve and to protect”. Go for the gold. Keep smiling. Back to basics.

B Gaudeamus igitur juvenes dum sumus. C Вся власть Cоветам! Советская власть плюс электрификация всей страны. Да здравствует КПСС! Социализм с человеческим лицом. Кадры решают все. Наши цели ясны, задачи определены. За работу, товарищи! От каждого по способностям, каждому по потребностям.

TASK 4. The following cases of metonymy are built on place names, which, apart from designation of certain locality, have acquired a symbolic meaning in the language of politics.

Translate the sentences containing: A. American realities, B. British realities, C. Miscelanea.

A

1. Madison Avenue techniques have proved to be very successful in politics. Since the 1950s Madison Avenue has been selling political candidates like soap.

2. Some of the journalists take their cues from Foggy Bottom , which seems to be deeply divided over the issue.

3. Tomorrow’s “ground zero” won’t likely be another skyscraper or government building but railways, airports, grain silos, or high-voltage transmission lines. (F. Policy, January-February, 2002)

4. Chalabi’s many friends on Capitol Hill and among the civilians at the Pentagon see him as the driving force who kept the Iraqi opposition alive through years of neglect by the Clinton administration. (Newsweek, January 21, 2002, p.20)

5. September 11 has solved the problem of priorities. But it will still take a sustained shift in attitudes to produce lasting change. […] There are many fixes to make, but the biggest one lies not in Langley, Va., but on Pennsylvania Avenue. (Newsweek, January 21, 2002, p.9)

6. We see now what has been obvious but neglected for a very long time: that what happens on Wall Street affects not only Main Street but the central markets of the world and vice versa, […] and what happens at one end of Pennsylvania Avenue is unavoidably linked to what happens at the other end. (N. Y. Times, October 30, 1987).

7. The analysts’ scandal highlights one reason some Wall Street firms in modern times can’t resist treating men and women of Main Street as chickens to be plucked. With the end of fixed commissions on stock trades in 1975, individual investors – while remaining an important source of revenue – became progressively less important for most firms than the huge fees to be earned from underwriting and investment banking for big corporations. (WSJ, December 23, 2002, p.C3)

8. Historically, periods of war are followed by a steep fall in weapons spending when the sense of a threat recedes. That occurred throughout the 20^th century, no matter who occupied the Oval Office. (WSJ)

9. He has built a small, utterly loyal and tight-lipped circle that will follow him to the West Wing after January 20.

10. As the power and reach of the internet continue to grow, the illicit trading of perfect copies may well devastate the music, movie and publishing industries. The content industries want to protect themselves with anti-copying technology, backed by stronger laws so far, they have been at loggerheads with technology firms about how to implement such schemes […]. But a deal between Hollywood and Silicon Valley is likely eventually. (Econ., January 25-31, 2003, p.14)

11. Perhaps Brussels 2003 will one day rank alongside Philadelphia 1787.(Econ., March 8-14, 2003, p.37)

12. But as if to chime with a new century, Broadway in the past few years seems quietly to have broken its own rules. (Econ., April 26 – May 2, 2003, p.75)

B

1. If pensioners and shareholders find themselves worse off in the months and years to come, as likely as not the fault will lie with the fat cats at Whitehall. (WSJ, June 26, 2002, p.9).

2. The interview paints a vivid and fascinating picture of the mood of the man at Number 10. (Guard., September 11, 2001, p.9).

3. A No 10 spokesman said this had nothing to do with the […] choice of Sacred Heart [the Roman Catholic School]. (Times, February 1, 2003, p.10)

4. At present nobody can predict what decision will be made at No 11.

5. Of course, he [Bill Clinton] will take any excuse to go to England to visit Chelsea [his daughter], who is studying at Oxford and is now fair game for Fleet Street. (Newsweek, April 29, 2002, p.44)

6. This Sunday lunchtime political show on BBC 1 is likely to be radically overhauled as it is regarded as being too Westminster oriented and taking little account how issues relate to voters.

7. Many EU countries want to go even further. At a convention on Europe’s future now being held in Brussels, the German government, for example, says that a single European diplomatic service should replace national ones: au revoir to the Quai d’Orsay: farewell to King Charles Street. (Econ., September 21, 2002, p.33)

8. A brief rally on Wall Street helped pull the City back from the edge of the full-scale meltdown which was in prospect when £40 bn was wiped off the value of Britain’s top 100 companies by lunchtime. (WSJ)

9. The Old Bailey often brings disappointment to news editors.

10. As for chancellor, his almost atavistic dislike of Oxbridge is well known. (Econ., January 25-31, 2003, p.36)

C

1. The Arab Street wants the American president to put the squeeze on the Israeli hawkish prime minister. Only thus can Israel be persuaded to make the compromises necessary for peace.

2. He [the French president] does not have a lot of room to manoeuvre. The street is going to be his main opponent and he is going to have a very short grace period. (WSJ, June 11, 2002)

3. Fat cats do not dominate Britain’s boardrooms. (WSJ, June 26, 2002, p.9)

4. Asked if he had anything at all to say about the question of boardroom pay, he was cautions to a fault about one of the greatest injustices of the age. (Guard., September 11, 2001, p.9)

5. His fate was determined on January 30: late at night he emerged as a smoke-filled room candidate.

6. […] Lord Tebbit accused him the next day of being a “servant of Brussels” […]. (WSJ, October 15-16, 1999)

7. Tony Blair’s Waterloo. (Econ., November 23-29, 2002, p.13)

8. This kind of iconoclastic analysis, while quite common in Washington, is still very rare in Europe’s self-styled capital. (Econ., December 7-13, 2002, p.36)

9. Middle England voted for Mr Blair in numbers which few would have predicted a years ago. (Econ., May 3-9, 1997, p.36)

10. If there is a common culture that binds India’s vast multiethnic society it is that of Bollywood. (Newsweek, June 30-July 7, 2003, p.100)

TASK 5. A common pitfall for translation comes with words denoting some phenomena of Russian political culture, which have no language equivalents.

A. To illustrate the point, we offer a few of them for you to render in English:

1. Потёмкинские деревни

2. Гулаг

3. Заказные убийства

4. Вертикаль власти

5. Народничество

В. Study the versions of translation suggested by British and American native speakers. Compare and evaluate the merits and demerits of these variants.

1. John Rhinelander, legal adviser to the US delegation that negotiated the ABM Treaty, has called the Alaska project [a US future missile shield] a “Potemkin Village”… - a face without substance. (M. Times, June 14, 2002)

2. The spontaneous, mass boycott of the national census is the latest reminder that the appearance of social calm and political stability in Russia possesses all the qualities of the proverbial Potemkin village. (M. Times, October 23, 2002, p.11)

3. This focus [of Amnesty International] on the rights of prisoners was particularly well chosen in a decade that saw massive incarcerations, from those in China during the Cultural evolution to Chile under a military dictatorship, not to mention the continuing existence of gulags (slave camps) in the Soviet Union. (Akira Iriye, p.112-113)

4. Togliatti, Russia: In this Russian capital of cars and crime, where contract killings occur as often as once a week, Valeri Ivanov, a sharp-penned journalist with a ferocious sense of public duty, had many enemies. (IHT, May 17, 2002, p.6)

5. Moscow police called it [the assassination of the governor of the Magadan region] a contract hit […]. (M., Times, October 23, 2002, p.3)

6. [Kalmykia President Kirsan] Ilynmzhinov, a holdover from the Boris Yeltsin era, when governors were told to take as much sovereignty as they could handle, does not fit into Putin’s ideal of the power vertical. (Ibid., p.10)

7. The mid-century debate between Westernizers and Slavophiles pointed up a tradition, visible on both sides, of narodnichestvo – faith in the simple laboring people, especially the peasantry, as uncorrupted by political power and bourgeois values and capable of delivering Russia onto the path of social justice. (R.H.Donaldson, J.L.Nogee. The Foreign Policy of Russia: Changing Systems, Enduring Interests. New York, Sharpe, 1998, p.p. 23-24).

C. Try to translate some more of these political-culture-specific elements.

Декабристы, раскулачивание, гласность, перестройка, опричнина, домострой, пятилетка, "западники" и "славянофилы", большевики, "кровавое воскресение", диктатура пролетариата, аппаратчик, субботник, "Яблоко", ближнее зарубежье, государственник, «Единая Россия», День защитника Отечества (23 февраля); День согласия и примирения (7 ноября); Совет Федерации; Федеральное Собрание, Российский союз промышленников и предпринимателей.

Прорубить окно в Европу; накануне праздника встать на трудовую вахту; пересесть на «Волги»; положиться на «авось»; использовать средства не по назначению, объявлять дефолт, работать по совместительству.

D Below is a list of Russian culture-specific words selected from: А.Л.Бурак, М.Берди, В.С.Елистратов, Дополнение к русско-английским словарям. М., Астрель, АСТ, 2003. Learn the suggested equivalents.

беспредел	(total) chaos/(total) lawlessness/mayhem
Ванька-встанька	a roly-poly doll
вневедомственная охрана	a private security agency
военно-учебные сборы	annual reservist trainings
выработать свой ресурс	to outlive one’s usefulness
выставлять пикеты	to set up picket lines
дедовщина	hazing in the military
дружинник	a voluntary citizen patrolman
духовность	spirituality
жилищно-коммунальное хозяйство	the housing maintenance and utilities board
закономерный	logical/typical/characteristic
знаковый	emblematic/indicative/hallmark/sign of the times/personification
иждивенческие настроения	a welfare mentality
инвестиционная пирамида	a pyramid investment scheme
коммунальные платежи	utility bills
компромат	dirt
лицо кавказской национальности	a Transcaucasian national/a person from the Caucasus
народность	the national ethos
остаточный принцип	the leftover principle/on whatever’s leftover/on leftovers
отлаженный	smoothly running
социальная защищенность	a welfare safety net/the social security system
судьбоносный	earthshaking/earthshattering
Счетная Палата	the Audit Chamber
уходить на заслуженный отдых	to take one’s well-deserved rest/to retire with a sense of a job well done
целевое кредитование	earmarked lending/directed lending
черный нал	black money
шефская помощь	corporate assistance

TASK 6. Test your knowledge of world literature and cinema.

1. What do these characters embody? What kind of symbols are they? What works do they figure in? Translate their names into Russian.

Особое внимание следует обращать на перевод имен литературных персонажей.

В.Г.Гак, Б.Б.Григорьев.

Теория и практика перевода, М., «Интердиалект», 1997, стр.362

Cinderella, Othello, Romeo, Becky (Rebecca) Sharp, Lolita, Dorian Gray, Sherlock Holmes, Lone Ranger, Miss Marple, Lady Macbeth, Mephistopheles, Tarzan, Sancho Panza, Tartuff, Hercule Poirot, Three Musketeers, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Ugly Duckling, the Big Bad Wolf.

B. Sort out the names of the 20th century British and American writers (given in the alphabetical order) to make two lists. Translate them into Russian. Name at least two works written by each of them.

O brave new world that has such people in’t.

W.Shakespeare (The Tempest)

- Do you like Kipling?

- And what is to kipple?

Joke

1. Isaak Asimov	20. Mario Puzo
2. Ray Bradbury	21. Jerome David Salinger
3. Archibald Joseph Cronin	22. William Saroyan
4. Theodore Dreiser	23. George Bernard Shaw
5. William Faulkner	24. Irwin Shaw
6.John Galsworthy	25. Alan Sillitoe
7. Graham Green	26. Upton Bill Sinclair
8. Arthur Hailey	27. Charles Percy Snow
9. Lilian Hellman	28. Muriel Sarah Spark
10. Ernest Hemingway	29. John Ernst Steinbeck
11. James Joyce	30. Irving Stone
12. David Herbert Lawrence	31. William Styron
13. Jack London	32. John Tolkien
14. William Somerset Maugham	33. John Updyke
15. Arthur Miller	34. Gore Vidal
16. Margaret Mitchell	35. Kurt Vonnegut
17. Eugene O’Neill	36. Robert Penn Warren
18. George Orwell	37. Thornton Niven Wilder
19.John Priestley	38. Tennessee Williams

C. Match the names of the characters with the symbolic meaning they carry. Translate the names.

...Будь переводчик семи пядей во лбу, ему все равно не запомнить всех каверз, которые могут подстроить имена собственные. Ради самоза­щиты ему приходится то и дело заглядывать в словари и справоч­ники.

В.С.Виноградов. Введение в переводоведение. М., из-во ИОСО РАО, 2001, стр.159

1. Babbitt	a. a tyrant of propriety, a prudish narrow-minded busibody
2. Big Brother	b. a faithful follower or efficient helper
3. Mrs.Grundy	c. a noble criminal who robs the rich to help the poor
4. Robin Hood	d. a politician who gives a lot of attractive promises which are impossible to carry out
5. Don Quixote	e. a superior fighter
6. Scrooge	f. a mad scientist who enthusiastically urges nuclear warfare, a maniac who promotes wholesale destruction
7.Swengali	g. a black who is deemed over-eager to win the approval of whites
8.Strangelove	h. an excellent spy, a superman
9. Faust	i. a business or professional man who conforms unthinkingly to prevailing middle-class standards
10. James Bond	j. a person who sells his soul to the devil to gain knowledge and power
11. Uncle Tom	k. an all-powerful government or organization monitoring and directing people’s actions
12. Rambo	l. a romantically impractical, unrealistically idealistic and extravagantly chivalrous person
13. the Pied Piper	m. a miser, a skinflint
14. Man Friday	n. one who has an usual power of persuasion, one who makes a person famous, usually with evil intentions
15. Jekyll and Hyde	p. a young man who resists adult responsibilities; a perpetual adolescent
16. Peter Pan	q. one who creates, and is ultimately destroyed by, a technological marvel; a monstrous creation or a work that ruins its originator
17. Desdemona	r. a dreamer who imagines himself in dramatic or heroic situations
18. Frankenstein	s. a courageous heart beneath a grotesque exterior
19. Quasimodo	t. a person in two minds unable to make a choice between two possibilities
20. Montaques and Capulets	u. one having a two-sided personality, one side of which is good and the other evil
21.Walter Mitty	v. opposing sides in a long-standing, destructive feud
22. Buridan’s ass	w. an innocent victim of violent jealousy
23. Sir Humphrey	x. a powerful senior civil servant able to control a government minister (his political master)

TASK 7. “We are all Athenians in a sense, for the ideas of ancient Greece have permeated our whole culture. Not only has Greek and Roman mythology furnished inspiration, exerted influence, and provided subject matter for many masterpieces of poetry, prose, sculpture, and painting, but its stories are interesting and entertaining in themselves, to say nothing of having provided the source of classical allusions which appear continually in editorials, addresses, lectures, advertisements, and conversations. Scientists have found mythology a treasure chest in providing names for animals, plants, constellations, planets, and – more recently in our space age – for missiles and space vehicles like Gemini, Apollo, Mercury, and Zeus.”

This what Prof. J.E. Zimmerman writes in the introduction to his Dictionary of Classical Mythology.^*

A knowledge of classical mythology is indispensable in understanding much of political English. See if you are well versed in this field.

1. Match the names taken from Greek mythology with the description. Explain why they have developed such meanings in modern English

Who was that Greek guy, the only place you could

kill him was in the heel?

A student in the library of Gorham High

School. (Cited in: Richard Lederer. The

Miracle of Language. Pocket Books, New

York, 1999, p. 159)

1. Scylla and Charybdis	a. a handsome young man
2. Odysseus	b. someone who flies high, disregards warnings, and pays the price for hubris and pride
3. Icarus	c. two equally hazardous alternatives
4. Tantalus	d. 1) just punishment; 2) one who imposes it; 3) anyone or anything that it seems will surely defeat one
5. nemesis	e. a person doomed to eternal suffering (without water and food)
6. Apollo	f. great traveler
7. Penelope	g. a hero, a large strong man able to perform feats of strength
8. Argus	h. a faithful wife
9. Hercules (Heracles)	i. persistent or ever-increasing evil
10. hydras	j. an alert watchman
11. muse	k. a wise loyal advisor; a teacher or coach
12. Croesus	l. a spirit regarded as inspiriting a poet or artist
13. mentor	m. a very rich person
14. chimera	n. a self-complacent, self-conceited person in love with himself
15. narcissus	o. a unreal monster; an impossible or foolish fancy
16. Olympus	p. one who creates or remakes another person by teaching skills or accomplishments and then falls in love with his/her protégé
17. oracle at Delphi	q. the high place inhabited only by highly talented professionals
18. Orpheus	r. 1) any person of great wisdom; 2) opinion or statements of any such prophet
19. Pygmalion	s. a symbol of poetic inspiration
20. Parnassus	t. a skillful musician with magic powers
21. Pegasus	u. 1) poetry or poets collectively; 2) any center of poetic or artistic activity
22. siren	v. a seductive woman

B. Translate the sentences containing mythological characters and explain their origin.

1. Domestically, the challenge will be whether Malaysia’s political system – fashioned over the past 21 years by Dr. Mahathir’s personalized and paternalistic style of government, which often featured the use of draconian laws to stamp out dissent – can stand the test of a transfer of power. (WSJ, June 26, 2002, p.2)

2. So the stage was set for a trial that became a Pyrrhic victory for the company.

3. A living language cannot be made to fit the Procrustean bed of dictionaries.

4. The one Achilles heel in the US–Bosnian cooperation has been America’s reluctance to be open with the Bosnian public about what’s going on. (WSJ, March 15-17, 2002, p.8)

5. The prime minister set himself the Herculean task to push Britain closer to Europe and attain its full integration into the European Union. Alas! So many leaders have been engaged in this Sisyphean labour since the early 1950s.

6. Did September 11 Open Nuclear Pandora’s Box? (Headline in M. Times, March 11, 2002, p.14)

7. The Pandora’s box of the American empire is still open, releasing its monsters and fears on a world still not fully under its control. (Guard., November 30, 2001, p.8)

8. A crisis is looming large, as Argentina is teetering on the brink of devaluation. The people are fearful expecting the Sword of Damocles to fall upon them at any moment. (IHT)

9. The Gordian knot which entangles the Israelies and the Palestinians must be cut as soon as possible.

10. The new government seems to be seriously engaged in cleaning the Augean stables of the corruption and cronyism inherited from the Yeltzin era, when a small coterie of influential businessmen won control of some of Russia’s prize assets through privatization actions that some observers have argued were rigged. (M. Times)

11. The president pointed out that small- and medium-size businesses fall a victim to organized crime and corruption. Entrepreneurs find themselves between Scylla and Charybdis. On the one hand they are harassed by racketeers and other kinds of criminals, on the other hand they are attacked by corrupted state officials, including those working in law enforcement agencies. (M. Times)

12. It [France] has also long suspected the Central Europeans of being a Trojan horse for the Atlantic alliance within the EU. (Econ., February 22-28, 2003, p.33)

13. A commentator in a leading German newspaper this week describes Poland as America’s “Trojan donkey”. (Econ., May 10-16, 2003, p.25)

14. Is the Midas touch an inherent feature of all millionaires?

15. The government’s stake on space research, oil, gas, steel, and biochemistry may prove to be Ariadne’s clew to take the economy out of a mess and bring the country to prosperity.

C. Translate the passages containing references to Greek and Roman mythology.

1. Вот и получается, что выигрывают от этой акции устрашения только «силовики». Но если копнуть глубже, то и для них она может обернуться пирровой победой. (АиФ №33, август 2003, стр.7)

2. До тех пор пока цены на нефть не снизятся, финансовые власти будут находиться между Сциллой и Харибдой: стремлением снизить инфляцию, с одной стороны, и не навредить отечественному производителю – с другой. («Известия», 22 августа 2003, стр.5)

TASK 8. The language of politics is abundant in proper names, especially names of famous people. Test your knowledge of “Who’s Who” in the US, the UK and other countries of the world.

What’s in a name?

W.Shakespeare

(“Romeo and Juliet”)

A. Identify the people and look for background information on them in special dictionaries or encyclopaedias. Be ready to report your findings in class. Translate the sentences into Russian.

1. This was not a proposal to recreate Dickensian sweatshop but to encourage a modern workplace. (Times, February 15, 2003, p.29)

2. Watching the ever more Kafkaesque news out of the Middle East, I’ve reached an opinion about what’s going to put an end to the furor over Israel and the Palestinians, and possibly even stop the fighting. (WSJ, April 18, 2002, p.13)

3. Mr Brown’s stewardship of the economy has been so orthodox that his nickname, Prudence, or his Bismarkian sobriquet, the Iron Chancellor, trip fittingly off the tongue. (Ibid., p.12)

4. Earlier this year, Robert Kagan, an American historian, suddenly became a celebrity in Brussels, after he wrote an article for Policy Review, an American journal, arguing that Europeans and Americans have fundamentally different attitudes to the world. Americans, he declared, were “Hobbesians”, at ease with the use of force; Europeans were “Kantians”, yearning for a world of perpetual peace in which all difficulties are settled by multilateral discussion. (Econ., December 7-13, 2002, p.36)

5. Mr F., whose party’s electoral support has dropped from 19% in its heyday to around 3% today, has found himself backstage in a drama of Wagnerian proportions.

6. Will the public believe a person who preaches clean politics and practices Machiavellian principles?

7. An Orwellian Pentagon scheme to analyse government and commercial databases for suspicious activity, called “Total Information Awareness”, has also been blocked for the moment. There has been a revolt by librarians, book shops and universities against demands by FBI and other officials for access to their records. (Econ., March 8-14, 2003, p.48)

B. Make adjectives from the following names.

Thomas Jefferson George Washington Winston Churchill Richard Nixon

Ronald Reagan Margaret Thatcher Bill Clinton Tony Blair

C. Identify the people and look for background information on them. Be ready to report your findings in class. Suggest suitable translations for the following word combinations.

«Но дело не только в особенностях формального облика имен в разных языках. Тому, кто читает и переводит литературу на иностранном языке, важно не только избежать «орфографических» ошибок, но иной раз еще важнее понять, кто или что скрывается за именем, какую смысловую нагрузку оно несет».

Д.Е.Ермолович. Англо-русский словарь персоналий. М., изд-во «Русский язык», 1993, стр.5.

Cromwellian ruthlessness Napoleonic push Gladstonian political courage Wilsonian slogans McCarthyite persecutions Hitlerite dictatorship Gandhian non-violent resistance Marxist dogmas Leninist principles Victorian morals Edwardian elegance Baconian theory

Orwellian propaganda Byronic romanticism Dantesque/Dantean depth Homeric rhythm Aesopian/Aesopic language Daliesque motifs Cartesian thesis Socratic method Einsteinian brains Malthusian theory Freudian impulses Darwinian struggle for survival

D. What do these people have in common? What allows us to bring them together and place them in the same category? Find one or two common features in each case. Tell what they are famous/notorious for. Translate these names into Russian.

Как лексическая категория, персоналии близки к реалиям, а их изучение является неотъемлемой частью лингвострановедения, без которой невозможна полноценная подготовка филолога и переводчика.

Ермолович Д.И. Англо-русский словарь персоналий. М., из-во «Русский язык», 1993, стр.6.

1. James Monroe (1758-1831) and Harry Truman (1884-1972)

2. Robert Edward Lee (1807-1870) and Ulysses Simpson Grant (1822-1885)

3. Martin Luther King (1929-1968) and Jessy Jackson (1941- ?)

4. James Watt (1736-1819) and Michel Faraday (1791-1867)

5. Thomas More (1478-1535) and Robert Owen (1771-1858)

6. Alan Shepard (1923- ), Neil Armstrong (1930- ), and John Glenn (1921- )

7. Joseph Pulitzer (1847-1911) and William Randolph Hearst (1863-1951)

8. Cornelius Vanderbilt (1794-1877), Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919), and Henry Ford (1863-1947)

9. Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979) and Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975)

10. Nicola Sacco (1891-1927) and Bartolomeo Vanzetti (1888-1927)

11. Allan Pinkerton (1819-1884) and John Edgar Hoover (1895-1972)

12. John Booth (1838-1865) and Lee Harvey Oswald (1934-1963)

13. Anne Boleyn (1507-1536) and Mary Stuart (1542-1587)

14. Duke Ellington (1899-1974), George Gershwin (1898-1937), and Glenn Miller (1904-1944)

15. Billy the Kid (1859-1881), Jack the Ripper (?) and Al Capone (1899-1947)

E. Sort out the names to make two lists: one of those connected with British culture, the other – of those connected with American culture. Translate the names into Russian. Tell what these people are famous/notorious for. Make use of special dictionaries and encyclopedias to cope with the task properly.

Knowledge is of two kinds. We know a subject ourselves, or we know where we can find information on it.

Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)

Francis Drake, Rupert Murdoche, Paul Revere, Christopher Wren, Admiral Nelson, Joseph McCarthy, Anthony Eden, Thomas Paine, William Caxton, the Rockefellers, Benjamin Disraeli, Solomon R.Guggenheim, Walter Disney, Geoffrey Chaucer.

F. Translate the passages containing names of people.

1. He [Mr Arafat] sees Mr Dahla [the former security chief in Gaza], once a favoured son, as a Brutus, conspiring with Israel and America to unseat him from within. (Econ., April 26 – May 2, 2003, p.33)

2. The Supreme Court will reconsider the scope of the famous Miranda warnings. (Ibid., p.41)

3. Men’s manners have improved markedly since Genghis Khan’s day. Harems went out of style centuries ago, and even despots now disavow pillage and oppression as ideals. (Newsweek, June 16, 2003, p. 45).

4. At least seven SARS movies are remored to be in the works – including one that will tell the story of a Chinese nurse, modeled after Florence Nightingale, but set in modern SARS-crisis days (Ibid., p. 55).

5. “I am liberating the cinema, like America has liberated Iraq”, von Trier [Danish film director] boasted to NEWSWEEK the day after “Dogville” premiered at the Cannes Film Festival last month. “I’m not satisfied with the way things are, and furthermore, I’m willing to do something about it. I’m the Che Guevara of the film world, and I will end by being betrayed”. (Ibid, p. 56).

6. If France and Germany do try to lead the European Union towards some form of closer political union, they may find that some followers drop away. In that case the end-game may be what the newspaper describes as “the negation of the European Union – a Metternich-style alliance at the heart of the EU”. (Econ., October 25-31, 2003, p. 31).

7. Г. Явлинский: «О том, что может случиться в случае административного пересмотра итогов приватизации, я вам рассказывать не буду: я не Хичкок». (АиФ № 38, сентябрь 2003, стр. 2).

G. Guess who these people are. Write their full names both in Russian and in English.

Great men are too often unknown, or, what is worse, misknown.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881)

1. India’s independence leader who preached religious tolerance and non-violence.

2. Signatories of the Atlantic charter which is often regarded as the genesis of the UN.

3. The author of “Prince” who laid down a doctrine holding that the state’s interests override ordinary considerations of morality.

4. Italy’s dictator, the leader of the fascist movement.

5. Anti-apartheid leader, the world’s most famous political prisoner and later president of the South African Republic.

6. The author of the ‘separation of power’ theory.

7. The famous statesman and military leader who said that his military victories might be forgotten but his civil code would keep his memory alive.

8. The lawyer and statesman who laid the foundations of International Law as a science.

9. The renowned physicist who formulated the theory of relativity.

10. The Prussian officer, the greatest ever writer on military theory and war, best known for propagating the thesis that war is indistinguishable from political and social structures generating it and should therefore be conceived in terms of them.

11. American diplomat credited with formulating the doctrine of containment of communism, who published a relevant article under the pseudonym ‘X’.

12. The person who was in the words of his contemporary Henry Lee, “first in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen”.

13. The American President whose government established diplomatic relations with the USSR.

14. A professor of Law and a writer who discovered a special kind of law dealing with bureaucracy in modern societies.

15. The U.S. newspaper owner, journalist and philanthropist who established yearly prizes (called by his name) for work in journalism, literature, and (since 1943) music.

16. The architect of the League of Nations.

17. The US statesman who coined the term “military-industrial complex” and warned of the dangers of this phenomenon.

18. The poet who, in his own words, awoke one morning and found himself famous.

19. The architect of the EU Constitution.

TASK 9.”Traduttore-tradittori”. Translated from Italian, this phrase means “Translators are traitors” («Переводчики – предатели») and refers to professionals who make gross mistakes distorting the meaning of the original text. The phrase implies that with his/her poor translation a bad translator may do more harm than good.

Below is a selection of passages from students’ test papers containing proper names. Find mistakes and classify them. Write the correct version of translation.

На страницах печати, а то и в книгах нет-нет да и встретишь таких таинственных субъектов, как Картезий (вместо правильного Декарт), Роджет (вместо Роже), сэр Рэлидж (вместо Роли или Рэли) и т.п. […] Некоторые иностранные имена и по сей день существуют в русском языке в виде непохожих друг на друга дублетов, по которым зачастую нелегко догадаться, что они принадлежат одному и тому же лицу.

Д.И.Ермолович. Англо-русский словарь персоналий. М., из-во «Русский язык», 1993, стр.5.

A

1. Римский Папа Жан Поль Второй (John Paul II)

2. Генеральный секретарь ООН Ю.Хант (U.Thant)

3. Генеральный секретарь ООН Курт Вальдхейм (Kurt Waldheim)

4. Лауреат Нобелевской премии матушка Тереса (Mother Teresa)

5. Лидер движения за независимость испанских колоний в Южной Америке Саймон Буливар (Simon Bolivar)

6. Премьер-министр Великобритании Хэрольд Макмиллан (Harold Macmillan)

7. Участник заговора с порохом Ги Фаукс (Guy Fawkes)

8. Опрос Галлапа (Gallup poll)

9. Латиноамериканский революционер Эрнест Чегевара (Ernesto Che Guevara)

10. Американсий писатель Горе Видал (Gore Vidal)

11. Сомневающийся Томас (Doubting Thomas)

12. Библейский персонаж Джон Баптист (John the Baptist)

13. Германский герцог, завоевавший Англию, Вильям Победитель (William the Conqueror)

14. Закон Мурфи (Murphy’s Law)

Б

В Романии; в Дамаскусе; на Карибах; в городе, расположенном во французской части Баскии; в Лебаноне; в Монтенегрии; в Английском проливе; в Западном банке Иордании (on the West Bank of the Jordan)

B.

Президент Нельсон Мэндел объявил в среду, что Южная Африка собирается прервать дипломатические отношения с Тайванью в угоду Китаю.

TASK 10. Language of politics is full of tricky allusions that appear without accompanying explanations in our daily reading. These sideways references are intended to add colour and vigour to the expression of certain ideas. But they may be lost on us if we do not know what they mean. Hidden citations pose a great challenge to interpreters and translators.

Try to identify political allusions in the following: sentences (А), headlines and subheadings^*(B). Suggest your version of translation.

What’s the use of a good quotation if you can’t change it?

Doctor Who

A

1. We need to invest for tomorrow rather than consume today. It is time that we ended a fiscal policy based on the notion that you can fool most of the people most of the time. (US News and World Report, March 16, 1992)

2. In the opinion of this ex-British soldier, more dispassionate reporting of the event is called for – not total emphasis on the tragedy of those lost [among the hostages] and unreasonable criticism of the man at whom “the buck stops”. (M. Times, October 28, 2002, p.11)

3. There is some truth in the old saw that “what’s good for Fiat is good for Italy”. (WSJ, May 27, 2002, p.4)

4. Seeing that the president is pushing both sexual abstinence among teenagers and conflict with Iraq, the Bush agenda seems to be “Make War, Not Love”. (Newsweek, December 23, 2002, p.16)

5. With 13 years to go to the target date, virtually all parts of the world still have a chance to meet most or all of the goals but the key lesson of the past decade is that success will not happen by itself. There is no autopilot, no magic of the marketplace, no rising tide of the global economy that will lift all boats, guaranteeing that the goals will be reached by 2015. (From UN General-Secretary’s annual report. “Implementation of the United Nations Millennium Declaration”)

6. Few in Washington, since Wilson’s time, have seemed interested in speaking softly while carrying the big stick […]. Both Democratic and Republican presidential candidates in 2000 promised to overthrow the regimes of “rogue states”, rally laggard allies, and promulgate American-style democracy everywhere within reach. (F.Affairs, January/February 2001, p.227)

7. Although Americans did not fight to “make the world safe for democracy” as they had in 1917-18, World War II was for many if not most of them another crusade. (D. History, vol. 25, №3, Summer 2001, p.386)

8. Eggheads of the world, arise – I was even going to add that you have nothing to lose but your yolks. (Adlai Stevenson, Speech at Oakland, February 1, 1956)

9. Politics is not the art of the possible. It consists in choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable. (John Kenneth Galbraith)

10. It is true that neo-cons are more unsparing than most in their disdain for multilateral bodies that they think act against American interests. But their attitude to “entangling alliances” is pragmatic, rather than hostile across the board. (Econ., April 26-May 2, 2003, p.39)

B

1. Don’t watch my lips. (Econ., June 8-15, 2002, p.48)

2. Landlords of the world, unite! (Headline) The well-off stand up for their rights. (Subheading) (Econ., March 23-29, 2002, P.56)

3. The Indians are coming. (Guard., December 24, 2001, p.13). (India’s film industry is winning world-wide recognition)

4. We the Shoppers. (WSJ, November 29, 2002, p.A14)

5. The Buck Starts Here (about the US Department of Homeland Security). (Newsweek, December 9, 2002, p.16)

6. United They Stand (about US air carriers). (Time, December 16, 2002, p.20)

7. Disunited they fall (Headline). Wrangling with itself, Italy’s divided left is the right’s best ally (Subheading). (Econ., April 26-May 2, 2003, p.22)

8. The axis of good. (Headline) Mr Koizumi is the closest Asia can come right now to a leader like Tony Blair. But is that close enough? (Subheading). (Econ., May 3-9, 2003, p.51)

9. Roll up that map of Europe. (Econ., September 12-18, 1998, p.42)

10. I came, I saw… I’m Totally Lost. (About “The Matrix Reloaded,” a contemporary film which is not so easy to understand) (Newsweek, June 16, 2003, p.63)

TASK 11. In the following sentences (A, B) and headlines (C) identify allusions to art sources (literature and cinema). Translate the passages into Russian.

Дословная передача аллюзий, как правило, не достигает своей цели, оставляя невыраженными существенные элементы культурного фона исходного языка.

Е.В.Бреус. Основы теории и практики перевода с русского языка на английский. М., из-во УРАО, 2002, стр.112.

A

1. Humanity will say “farewell to arms” only when we educate every child to be a world citizen blind to national boundaries.

2. The government was yesterday warned to prepare for a “winter of discontent” on the railways as the industry revealed that passengers were trying to cope with “the worst peacetime disruption” they had ever encountered. (Guard., September 1, 2001, p.2)

3. During the 1970s nearly every group, both clinical and support staff, ‘took industrial action’ (such as strikes, go-slows and other protests). This unrest culminated in the “winter of discontent” in 1979 which was a major cause of the Conservative election victory in the spring of that year. (Understanding British Institutions, p.196)

4. To read or not to read? All books can be divided into three groups: books to read, books to re-read, and books not to read at all. (O. Wilde)

5. To mix literary references, it was a tale of two winters across Britain yesterday. In the West people near Exeter basked in early spring sunshine. In the East, commuters struggling to get to work, passed those still trying to get home from the night before as snow and ice brought large parts of the transport network to the brink of collapse. (Times, February 1, 2003, p.1)

6. Just before votes this week to decide how to reform the House of Lords, the leader of the House of Commons, Robin Cook, declared that the efforts to modernize the second chamber had become the parliamentary equivalent of “Waiting for Godot”: “It never arrives and some have become rather doubtful whether it even exists, but we sit around talking about it year after year”. How right Mr Cook turned out to be. (Econ., February 8-14, 2003)

7. In Anton Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard”, Lopakhin, the nouveau-riche businessman, begs the old-world landowner Ranevskaya to […] let out her land as dacha plots in order that she can pay off her debts. “Dachas and dachniks – forgive me but that’s so vulgar,” Ranevskaya replies, thus giving voice to the Russian nobility’s contempt for middle-class aspirations to country living. Exactly 100 years later, the last mohicans of the intelligentsia – the modern equivalent of the pre-revolutionary aristocracy – are similarly scornful of the pretentions of today’s nouveau-riche Russian who prefers to call his dacha a kottedzh […]. (Econ., June 21-27, 2003, p.82)

8. And what dazzling monsters feminism has created. Little girls used to be made of sugar and spice. These days they are made out of an indestructible combination of stamina and ambition. (Times, April 26, 2001)

9. The Catch-22 for the Tories is this: the better they do under Mr Duncan Smith, the more they will wish for a different leader. And the less likely it is they will get one. (Econ., July 5-11, 2003, p.38)

B

1. Karl Rove, Mr Bush’s Svengali, celebrated victory in the mid-term elections by ordering a march to the center on everything from tax cuts to the culture wars. (Econ., November 16-22, 2002, p.50)

2. Tony Blair will find it uphill work to convince his own parliamentary colleagues, many of them virulently anti-American, some often quasi-pacifists and probably most of them one-time unilateral nuclear disarmers, that marching to war with the Pentagon’s Dr.Strangeloves is the way to “a stable world based on prosperity and justice for all”. (Econ., April 13-19, 2002, p.38)

3. Other generations feel that they should vote, and many often troop dutifully to the polls to pull the lever for Tweedledum over Tweedledee. (US News & World Report, July 20, 1992)

4. You can’t stay an Uncle Tom when your people are fighting for their rights.^*

5. She [Madonna] has been called the ultimate Frankenstein product of MTV […]. (N.Y. Times, May 29, 1988)

6. Is privacy something we will trade off for convenience? Sentient computing with its reliance on knowing where users are, could certainly make the loss of privacy more serious. Dr Hopper at Cambridge University advocates acceptance and debate. Like it or not, he says, “the future is Big Brother – so let’s talk about it.” (Econ., June 21-27, 2003, Technology Quarterly, p.30)

7. Seen by some voter as a Robin Hood figure, stealing from those they think of as stealing from them, his nationalist platform (“kick out the IMF”) might have greater appeal if Turkey were spurned by the EU over membership and slighted by the United States after its parliamentary vote against American troop deployment. (Econ., March 8-14, 2003, p.66)

8. Whatever the power of senior civil servants before the 1980s, they too, during the Thatcher administrations and beyond, have been affected like the rest of the [civil] service. Reform has occurred to such an extent that commentators talk about the service being ‘de-Sir Humphried’. (Understanding British Institutions, p.88)

9. And it would be wrong to assume, in any case, that the traditional ‘Sir Humphrey’ has disappeared. Compared to the rest of the civil service, the mandarins have managed to preserve their position within the service very well indeed. (Understanding British Institutions, p.89)

10. But while the Brazilian Finance minister [Antonio Palocci] is an amiable conversationalist, Palocci is something of a Scrooge when it comes to managing his country’s money. (Newsweek, June 30-July 7, 2003, p.32)

11. In matters of domestic policy, there might be no better government in Europe than that of France. This could be surprising, as in matters of foreign policy, there might be no worse. Meet the Dr.Jekyll and Mr.Hyde of European politics.

The foreign policy is all Jacques Chirac. Yes, his excitable Foreign Minister, Dominique de Villepin (nighttime poet, daytime U.N. pin-up) does get Mr.Chirac all revved up at times. But Mr. De Villepin only acts at the behest of his boss. Mr. Chirac’s me-too Gaullism is as much a part of his persona as his ostentatious gestures. As usual with a rococo façade, the interior disappoints.

The domestic policy is however fashioned by the plodding Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, the Inspector Morse of government. (WSJ, September 10, 2003, p.A7)

12. The crux of the decision [of the European court of Justice on GM cro] was that any ban on “norel” organisms needed to be based on scientific evidence of risk, not hypotheticals or suppositions. It’s not enough, in other words, to speculate on the horrors of Frankenfoods unleashed upon the world, trampling the countryside and swallowing fighter jets like some Godzilla released from a lab. (WSJ, September 11, 2003, p.A8)

13. His Robin Hood efforts came to nought […]. (Econ., October 25-31, 2003, p. 77).

C

1. The two Chinese numbers most subject to suspicion are, first, its spectacular GDP growth rates and, second, the gargantuan amounts of foreign direct investment (FDI) that China claims to attract. (Econ., June 21-27, 2003, p.58)

2. Yet, even the Norwegians’ quixotic decision to give a Nobel peace prize to Aragat in 1994 didn’t deter him from his goal of driving Israel into the sea. (WSJ, April 16, 2002, p.15)

3. How the row is settled will affect the way Europe and America can work together in the future. They have supposedly already agreed on many of the basics: that Europe’s armies should boost their limited firepower, for example; and that the EU should be able to act independently of NATO in cases where the alliance […] chooses not to be involved itself. Indeed, a painstakingly worked-out formula, finalised in March, enables the EU to use NATO equipment for these sorts of military operations, as is already happening in the Lilliputian mission the Europeans have taken over from NATO in Macedonia. (Econ., October 25-31, 2003, p. 13).

D

1. Something rotten in the state of China. (Econ., February 16-22, 2002, p.55)

2. All for one, and one for all? (Econ., June 30 – July 6, 2001, p.58)

3. What’s in a name. (Econ., April 27 – May 3, 2002, p,88)

4. Welcome to the year 2000 (known otherwise as 1984). (D. Telegraph, January 5, 2000)

5. Putting Humpty together again. (Headline) Congo’s government and rebels prepare for peace talks. (Subheading). (Econ., October 13, 2001, p.45)

6. A Cinderella Rail Service Needs More than Three Wishes from Ministers. (Times, January 15, 2002)

7. Good Grades Catch-22. (Times-2, January 10, 2002, p.18) (Better results raise awkward questions about someone fiddling the figures at schools)

8. Time and Punishment. (Econ., April 13-19, 2002, p.47)

9. For whom the Liberty Bell tolls. (Econ., August 31 – September 5, 2002, p.18)

10. Paradise lost awaits asylum seekers. (Guard., September 11, 2001, p.3)

11. Rich man’s burden. (Econ., June 16, 2001, A survey…)

12. Animal Farm EU (Headline). In which some are more equal than others (Subheading). (WSJ, April 20-21, 2001)

13. To ban or not to ban. (Headline) Europe’s muddle over schools and headscarves. (Subheading) (Econ., October 25-31, 2003, p. 26).

TASK 12. Identify allusions to political and literary sources which feature in the Russian press. Suggest a possible version of translation.

Бахчанян предложил название для

юмористического раздела в газете:

«Архипелаг Гуд Лак»

С.Довлатов. Собрание

сочинений, т. 4, Санкт-Петербург,

«Азбука», 2001, стр.226

1. За годы палестино-израильского противостояния теракты и насилие стали повседневной реальностью на Ближнем Востоке. В этом смысле последний теракт в Иерусалиме ничем не отличается от многих предыдущих. Все происходило по привычной схеме «пришел – увидел – взорвал». («Коммерсант», 30 января 2004, стр. 9)

2. Какому народу принадлежит искусство? (Название статьи в АиФ № 27, июль 2003, стр. 3)

3. Красота … погубит мир. (Название статьи в АиФ № 50, декабрь 2003, Москва, стр. 20. Имеется в виду, что чем красивее пейзаж в Подмосковье, тем сильнее человеческое желание обосноваться в этом месте на ПМЖ)

TASK 13.Can you attribute the quotations given below? Who wrote or said these phrases? Under what circumstances and in what connection? Translate A and B into Russian, C – into English.

A quotation in a speech, article or book is like a rifle in the hands of an infantryman. It speaks with authority.

Brendan Francis

A

1. The ballot is stronger than the bullet.

2. Free! Free! Free at last!

3. One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

4. The world must be made safe for democracy.

5. I have a dream.

6. Russia is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

7. The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.

8. All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

9. Democracy is the government of the people, by the people, for the people.

10. There are lies, damn lies and statistics.

11. Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

12. Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

13. East is East and West is West and never the twain shall meet.

14. Important principles may and must be flexible.

15. Truth is a very complex thing and politics is a very complex business. There are wheels within wheels. One may be under certain obligations to people that one must pay. Sooner or later in political life one has to compromise. Everyone does.

16. Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.

17. We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal, and those interests it is our duty to follow.

18. A little learning is a dangerous thing.

19. An ambassador is an honest man sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.

20. Give me liberty or give me death.

21. America and England are two nations separated by the same language.

22. I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

23. If I want to call Europe, what number do I call?

24. In politics it is better to be feared than to be loved.

25. Diplomacy without force is like music without instruments.

26. In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.

27. Elementary, my dear Watson.

28. All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women [are] merely players.

29. Off with his/her hand!

30. Sentence first – verdict afterwards.

31. Auld Lang Syne.

32. Hitch your wagon to a star.

33. If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.

34. There is no such a thing as a free lunch.

35. Not by speeches and majority votes are the great questions of the day

decided …but by blood and iron.

B

1. A spectre is haunting Europe – the spectre of Communism.

2. War is an extention of politics by other means.

3. A nation of shopkeepers.

4. After us the deluge.

5. You too, Brutus?

6. Language has been given to man to conceal his thoughts.

7. Two things only the people anxiously desire, bread and the Circus games.

8. Render therefore into Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and unto god the things that are god’s.

9. The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!

10. I was just following orders.

11. Paris is well worth a mass.

12. Give me but one firm spot on which to stand, and I will move the earth.

13. Plato is dear to me, but dearer still is the truth.

14. From the sublime to the ridiculous there is only one step.

C

1. А сколько дивизий у Папы Римского?

2. Процесс пошел.

3. Искусство принадлежит народу.

4. Головокружение от успехов.

5. Поехали!

6. Ребята, давайте жить дружно!

7. Спасение утопающих – дело рук самих утопающих.

8. Так жить нельзя.

9. Трудно быть богом.

10. Горе от ума.

11. Как нам обустроить Россию?

12. Всем сестрам по серьгам.

13. Религия – опиум для народа.

14. За державу обидно.

15. Хотели как лучше, а получилось как всегда.

16. Если враг не сдается, его уничтожают.

17. Человек – это звучит гордо.

18. Преподнести на блюдечке с голубой каемочкой.

TASK 14. As one of our most notable academics in the theory of translation writes, "для того, чтобы успешно выступать в роли переводчика, необходимо знать не только два языка…, но и то, о чём идёт речь, то есть сам предмет речи"^*. Naturally, a political translator must be well versed in politics (and political sciences).

See if you can understand what political bodies (A), political figures (B) and political events or phenomena (C) are referred to in the following passages.

A

1. The head of the UN nuclear watchdog said Thursday that, in his view, Iraq was not as yet in material breach of a UN resolution on disarmament, contrary to what Britain and the United States have argued. (M. Times, January 31, 2003, p.11)

2. […] Europe’s top human rights watchdog was to review [Lord] Judd’s resignation request Friday, with a final decision to be made next Wednesday, Interfax reported. (Ibid., p.2)

3. And it is the poorer and historically less stable countries that are least likely to risk leaving Europe’s “rich man’s club”. (Econ., December 14-20, 2002, p.32)

4. The Argentine leaders hope that the world’s top money lender will come to their rescue.

5. For almost four decades two huge, monstrous cold-war creations were constantly on the alert ready to use every weapon at their command.

6. Unfortunately for Mr Blair, his most voluble fan club these days is on the benches opposite. (Econ., March 8-15, 2003, p.42)

7. The sanction powers of the UN under Chapter 7 are more extensive than those of its predecessor under Article 16.

8. Shadow cabinet members, such as Michael Howard, the shadow chancellor, bridle at the concept of [Britain’s] “associate membership” [in the EU] […] (Econ., July 5-11, 2003, p.36)

B

1. The Conservative Party has already suffered much since Lady Thatcher’s downfall from a leader who sat on the fence. (Econ., February 28 – March 5, 1998)

2. The articulator of the ‘loathsome trio’ phrase is confident that these nations do pose a grave danger.

3. There is even general agreement that the EU should be able to plan for its own military operations. The real disagreement is about how the Tervuren four want the EU to do that - in its own headquarters, entirely separate from NATO. (Econ., October 25-31, 2003, pp. 13-14).

C

1. After al-Queda’s strikes of September 11th, Mr Sharon [Israel’s prime-minister] warned the western democracies not to appease the Arabs at Israel’s expense, as they had appeased Hither at Czechoslovakia’s expense in the 1930s. (Econ., January 25-31, 2003, p.11)

2. With hindsight it is easy to see that the events of the last quarter of 1989 in eastern Europe brought about a revolution in international relations comparable in scope to those of 1815, 1848, 1918 and 1945. (Graham Evans and Jeffrey Newnham. The Penguin Dictionary of International Relations, 1998, Preface, p.VII)

3. And so people are talking quietly here about a Wilsonian project for reshaping the whole Middle East, a plan comparable in its ambition to those for Europe in 1919 and 1949. (M.Times, December 16, 2002, p.10)

4. […] Parliament will be weakened further still by the transfer of powers to more remote bodies on the European mainland. This is not likely to happen in some great Act of Disunion – a full stop, as it were, to put at the end of the sentence of which the 1707 Act of Union was the start (Econ., November 6-12, 1999, Survey, p.18)

5. There are concerns, of course, about the possibility of a violent crackdown. But the depth and breadth of the movement’s support make it clear that the [Iranian] mullahs would be committing a serious mistake if they tried to give the protestors [against their tyrannical rule] the Tiananmen Square treatment. (WSJ, June 17, 2003, p.A10)

6. Those policies, let it be noted, were not part of the “Washington consensus”. (Econ., April 26-May 2, 2003, p.12)

7. Europe, in effect, is witnessing the development of a new structure of collective security – a revised ‘Concert of Europe’ […] – which invites a tighter integration of military and security affairs. (D.Held &A.McGrew, D.Goldblatt & J.Perraton, p.125)

8. One of the students of American foreign policy has called the US decision to escalate the war in the autumn of 1950 (when the UN forces crossed the 38th parallel into North Korea) Truman’s Bay of Pigs.

TASK 15. What associations do the names of cities and towns raise?

Ассоциации […] составляют важнейшую часть лингвострановедческого описания. Например, Бостон [Boston] ассоциируется, с одной стороны, с первыми колонистами Новой Англии (Mayflower, Pilgrim Fathers, Plymouth Rock), борьбой за национальную независимость США (Sons of Liberty, Boston Tea Party, Boston Massacre, Concord, Lexington, Bunker Hill) – исторические ассоциации, а с другой – это «центр учености, снобизма и высокомерия», «родина бального танца и карточной игры» и многое другое.

Г.Д.Томахин.

«США. Лингвострановедческий словарь». М., изд-во «Русский язык», 1999, стр. 7

A. What pictures and images do the names of the following American cities conjure up?

Detroit Jamestown Las Vegas

Atlanta Houston Los Alamos

Chicago West Point

B. What additional meaning do the names of the following British cities and towns carry?

Aldermaston Blackpool Liverpool

Cambridge Bournemouth Edinburgh

Oxford Chester Coventry

Eton

C. What are the following cities famous for in the world of the twentieth-century politics and diplomacy?

Davos Kyoto Nuremberg

Helsinki Maastricht Paris

Geneva Munich Potsdam

The Hague Nice Strassburg

Hiroshima Yalta

TASK 16. Colours play a special role in politics. See if you are able to take your bearings in this “colourful” language.

A. Translate the collocations into Russian.

1. Black: money, economy, list, shirts, Monday, comedy, humour.

2. Blue: helmets, collar, workers, laws (Am.), chips, blood, ribbon, Pages (Am.), book.

3. Brown: shirts, forces.

4. Gray: economy, cardinal (eminence), zone, area, voters.

5. Green: party, berets, years, card, Paper, revolution.

6. Pink: views, members of the party, collar workers, collar jobs.

7. Red: scare, menace, ideas, brigades, alert, tape, Cross, hands.

8. White: flag, supremacy, schools, list, alert, lie, collar worker, House Office, Tie, Paper, war.

9. Yellow: race, Pages, press, metal, flag (Jack), ribbon, contract, fund.

B. Translate the sentences into Russian.

1. In America, the grey vote grew vocal. (Independent, February 16, 2002, The Weekend Review, p.12)

2. The organization is becoming more red.

3. Few historians have explored this earlier history of FBI activity. Their studies of Bureau surveillance have concentrated either on the Red Scare of 1919-20 or the internal security politics (subsumed under the term McCarthyism) of the Cold War. (D. History, vol. 24, №2, Spring 2000, p.211)

4. His politics underwent a considerable change towards the end of his life: from a die-hard red he turned into a pinko.

5. Mr. Schroeder seems unable to identify new issues for his red-green coalition. (WSJ, June 5, 2002, p.10)

6. With work to be done round the world, the Green Berets are seriously overstretched. (Econ., April 6-12, 2002, p.45)

7. The increasing productivity of food through the “green revolution” is ironically making the earth less inhabitable for all beings.

8. He is a true blue.

9. The Massachusetts Legislature has decided to give voters a chance to state whether they want the state’s blue laws repealed. (Rene J. Cappon. The Associated Guide to News Writing. Arco, 2002. p.124)

10. When, in October 1993, President Yeltsin finally dissolved this unrepresentative body, red-brown forces launched an armed uprising that was speedily quashed.

11. The President’s spin doctors spare no effort to make him look green.

12. Both measures, thanks to green lobbying, met strong resistance in Congress last year. (Econ., February 1-7, 2003, p.44)

13. It isn’t often that the build-up to a government White paper can honestly be called exciting, but the battle of Britain’s universities comes close. (Econ., January 25-31, 2003, p.14)

14. In the US history McCarthyism was a shameful page with its feverish hysteria, noisy witch-hunting and the prevalent slogan “Better dead than red”.

15. The blue-ribbon jury brought out the verdict of “Guilty”.

16. Another blue ribbon commission came to a different conclusion.

17. Putin Calls for Cutting Russian Red Tape. (Headline in WSJ, April 19-21, 2002, p.A3)

18. The Daily Telegraph boasts the grayest newspaper readers […]. (Econ., March 8-14, 2003, p.39)

19. The EU has done what it can to facilitate mobility and is removing green card restrictions for citizens of member states […] (WSJ, June 3, 2003, p.A11)

C. Write at least 20 English idioms with words denoting colours. Add to the list at least 10 English proverbs containing such words.

D. Translate the passages containing set phrases with words denoting colours.

1. Part of the reason the debate over the NHS is so highly charged is that the idea of charging for a visit to the doctor in the UK seems to evoke images of the bleeding or dying being turned away at the hospital door for forgetting their checkbooks. But this is a red herring. (WSJ, April 19-21, 2002, p.12)

2. The high-ranking guest was given a red-carpet welcome.

3. The Congressional committee has confirmed that the federal budget will be in the red this year.

4. The US and Britain have accused Iraq of spying on UN weapons inspectors and obstructing their work and have argued that such behavior amounts to a “material breach” of UN Security Council resolution 1441 and a legal green light for war. (M. Times, January 31, 2003, p.11)

5. He is a black sheep on the committee, constantly generating controversies.

6. The tricky bit in diplomatic negotiations is judging where the “red lines” are. (Econ., April 27 – May 3, 2002, p.57-58)

7. More grey matter will be able to stalk the corridors of Brussels after the European Union’s two main constitutional employers confirmed yesterday that they had abolished upper-age limits for recruitments. (Times, May 9, 2002, p.20)

8. Still, given the scale and cost of America’s deployments, the political capital Mr. Bush has invested, and the rest of the world’s inability to do much more than hold up a yellow card, it looks unlikely that Mr. Hussein will escape from this latest fix. (Econ., January 25-31, 2003, p.38)

9. […] Sqeezing Kim into a new and verifiable freeze may be the most realistic goal available. That will require talk and muscle. Both must be aimed at convincing Kim that North Korea will face U.S. military intervention if it crosses the “red line” of reprocessing the 8,000 fuel rods [стержни] at the Yongbyon reactor – as was the case in 1994. (WSJ, May 26, 2003, p.A6).

10. By announcing that they intend to set up a separate headquarters for planning European Union military operations, the four leaders crossed a clear “red line” drawn by supporters of the Atlantic alliance: that any new EU defence plan should not compete with NATO or duplicate its capabilities. (Econ., May 3-9, 2003, p.27).

E. Suggest English equivalents for:

1. Белая гвардия, белая кость, белые пятна на карте, белые стихи, средь бела дня, шито белыми нитками.

2. Красная Армия, Красная гвардия, «красные» регионы, писать с красной строки, проходить красной нитью, красный день календаря.

3. Серый политик, серая жизнь.

4. Черный ход, черная сотня, черная металлургия, черные мысли, черный день жизни, черное золото, черная зависть, откладывать на черный день, черным по белому.

5. Розовая/голубая мечта, розовые надежды, смотреть сквозь розовые очки.

TASK 17. Consider the alternatives. Rank them in order of preference. Try to find some more ways of conveying the same idea in each case.

1. In 1860 Richard Cobden, as a (representative, envoy, emissary, agent, messenger) of the British government successfully negotiated a treaty between Britain and France which (did away with, put an end to, eliminated, swept away) most of the tariffs and trade barriers that had long existed between the two neighbours.

2. (Following, in the aftermath of, in the wake of, after) the death of Stalin, some international agreements were reached. Thus, the summit conference in Geneva in 1955 (brought about, resulted in, ended in, brought forth, yielded) a peace treaty with Austria which provided for its neutral (state, stand, status, condition, position).

3. In (estimating, appraising, assessing) the UN’s performance some analysts argue that its history has been a (steady, invariable, constant) erosion of the (initial, original, early) euphoria that accompanied its creation in 1945.

4. Aid organizations and environmental groups have (spoken about, expressed, voiced, stated) their (alarm, concern, anxiety) at the light manner in which the corporation has (dismissed, brushed away, written off, ditched, discarded) its (founding, underlying, basic, fundamental) principle.

5. The money is expected to be (distributed, sprinkled, spread) throught the defense industry, giving all the major contractors (a bump, a surge, a bonanza swelling) in revenue. Among the areas (chosen, earmarked, slated, designated, marked out) for big funds are fighter jets, precision-guided weapons, unmanned vehicles for use on the ground and in the air.

TASK 18. A good interpreter and translator must be skilled in finding various ways of expressing the same idea. As O. Wilde said, “the man who could call a spade a spade should be compelled to use one. It is the only thing he is fit for”.

Practice your command of synonymics in the language of politics. Substitute synonymous or near-synonymous words and phrases for those underlined.

The American President certainly realized that Saudi Arabia – with its long border with Iraq, its important military installations, its ability to make up for drops in Iraqi oil production and the Al-Saud family’s strong dislike of Mr. Hussein – world be the logical foundation of any union against Iraq. But there is a difficult problem. Crown Prince Abdullah, the acting governor of Saudi Arabia, has floated a peace plan which has got much support in the region, but not as much appreciation from America as he would like. Some analysts think he may help with Iraq only if America contains Israel.

Meanwhile, the Iraqi leader has intensified diplomatic efforts by making his foreign minister restart long-stalled talks over the return of the UN weapons inspectors that Iraq tossed out in 1998. Mr. Hussein has sent a senior messenger, Ezzat Ibrahim, to warn adjacent Syria and Jordan not to give in to America, and has hinted that Iraq might normalize ties with Kuwait.

TASK 19. Choose the correct word in brackets.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – this is the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

M.Twain

1. This seasoned politician has a too (calculated, calculating) mind to afford such a blunder.

2. Those were unworthy statements (calculated, calculating) to deceive unwary public.

3. The interview was the first (substantial, substantive) discussion of foreign affairs by the President’s challenger.

4. After a 15-minute discussion of procedural matters they moved to the (substantial, substantive) issues.

5. Trinidad hopes to start exploiting its (substantial, substantive) deposits of oil and gas in the near future.

6. No effort should be spared to root out (unlawful, illegal, illegitimate, illicit) trafficking of drugs.

7. Last month the police discovered two (unlawful, illegal, illegitimate, illicit) vodka stills in the suburbs of the capital.

8. Palestinian leaders must re-establish their credibility as (legal, lawful, legitimate) diplomatic partners by irrevocably rejecting terrorism and doing all in their power to combat it. (IHT, April 8, 2002, p.8)

9. A good command of the (legal, lawful, legitimate) language is an undeniable asset in the (legal, lawful, legitimate) profession.

10. They were a bunch of rough illiterate country people with (barbaric, barbarous, barbarian) habits and (barbaric, barbarous, barbarian) notions.

11. That was a case of (barbaric, barbarous, barbarian) cruelty, which deserved tough punishment.

12. Critics are appalled at the (barbarism, barbarity) of his style.

13. We need more (historic, historical) (testimony, evidence) to consider this assumption proved.

14. April 12, 1961 is a (historic, historical) date for mankind.

15. Writing (a thesis, a dissertation) to take your Master’s degree at Cambridge is no bed of roses.

16. After the professor’s lecture I had (sufficient, enough) to digest during a whole week.

17. He has (sufficient, enough) reason to ask for a more lenient treatment.

18. Of all the aspects of genetic research, none is more (contradictory, controversial) than human cloning. (Econ., April 14-20, p,21)

19. Margaret Thatcher’s (contradictory, controversial) views on Europe were partly responsible for her 1990 downfall.

20. Two new studies published last week in the New England Journal of Medicine investigated the possible effects of mercury on the heart, and they seem to have reached (contradictory, controversial) conclusions. (Time, December 9, 2002, p.99)

21. He is a (contradictory, controversial) British businessman who achieved notoriety in 1994.

TASK 20. Read the text and translate it into Russian.