V. Answer the questions to the text:

1. What did the rulers of the ancient civilizations use accounting for?

2. When was the first known description of double-entry bookkeeping published?

3. What is the double-entry accounting system like?

4. What required merchants to adopt more sophisticated accounting systems during the Industrial Revolution?

5. What spurred the development of accounting in the nineteenth century?

6. What was the role of the government in the accounting developments?

UNIT 2

I. Memorize the following words:

entity – экономическая единица; юридическое лицо

uniform rules – единые правила

access – доступ

objective – цель

capacity – способность

to attempt to reconcile a conflict – попытаться урегулировать конфликт

treatment of data – обработка данных (информации)

uniformity – согласованность (единая система)

comparability – сопоставимость

the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) – комитет по

международным стандартам бухучета

II. Translate the following words and word combinations:

company accounts, external financial reporting, applicable, information needs, therefore, reliability, integrate, notion, imply

III. Read and translate the text: history of accounting Part 2

Accounting standards may be defined as '... uniform rules for external financial reporting applicable either to all or to a certain class of entity'. Accounting standards may be viewed as a method of resolving potential conflicts of interests between the various user groups which have access to company accounts. The various groups have different objectives, information needs, and capacities for the generation and interpretation of information and, therefore conflicts may arise between groups outside the entity. It is a role of accounting standards to attempt to reconcile the conflicts. A number of important issues for the accounting profession should be mentioned here. These issues are as follows:

-Reliability. Accounting information should be reliable in use.

• Uniformity. The pressure for the standardization of accounting practices is to ensure a uniformity of treatment of data and hence an identity of the meaning of information.

• Comparability. Reliability and uniformity are integrated in the notion of comparability.

• Judgment. Accountants say that they should be allowed to exercise some judgment in interpreting data. This implies that some variety should be allowed for in the procedures available for transforming data into information.

Accounting practice and financial reporting regulation have shown great variety internationally. In recent years there has been growing interest in the harmonization of international accounting. Factors which have stimulated the movement towards harmonization have included the increasing internationalization of business, the importance of multinational companies in the world economy, and the development of international capital markets. In 1973 the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) was established in an attempt to coordinate the development of accounting standards internationally.