Unit 4 Equivalence on lexical and semantic levels: lexical substitutions

Starting up

Y ou are going to listen to a short BBC report on the issue of human traffic in Chinese provinces downloaded from the BBC site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2012/03/120313_witn_chinese_human_traffic.shtml. Before you listen, discuss the following questions in pairs:

• What human trafficking is? What countries is it developed at?

• What have you recently heard about the problem of human traffic in the People's Republic of China?

• What do you knowl about the “one-child” policy introduced by the Chinese government 1978 in order to alleviate social, economic, and environmental problems?

Summary

Read the summary to the BBC report taken from the BBC site at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/learningenglish/language/wordsinthenews/2012/03/120313_witn_chinese_human_traffic.shtml and translate it using the lexical and grammatical substitutions suggested in brackets. Then listen to the report and fill in the gaps. After you check the gaps with the whole class, present the sight translation of the report.

Chinese human traffic (Gr. substitution of parts of speech), 13 March 2012

Chinese police have rescued more than twenty-four thousand women and children who had been taken from their homes last year, according to the authorities (Gr. Transformation — Word order). Some of those captured had been sold to other families or forced into prostitution (Grammar transformation — Syntax — Passive V. Into Active). Reporter: Martin Patience.

Among those________ ___ the police were more than _______ children __________ from their homes. Critics _______ the country's___ _______policy for creating a thriving _____ _______, where babies are ________ and then sold on for _________.

More than _________ women were also ___________. Some were used as workers, others _____ ______ marriage or prostitution.

According to _________ more than ________ human ________ ______ were broken up, but the authorities did not say how many people ___ _______ were __________ last year.

They vowed to ______ ____ their campaign ________ human trafficking. As _____ ________ show, the ________ of women and children remains a _________ problem in China.

Reading

Now read the additional information from The Guardian at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/11/chinese-trafficking-victims-rescued on the issue of the report above and perform the written translation of the article applying the techniques suggested in brackets:

Thousands of Chinese trafficking victims rescued by police

The Guardian, Associated Press in Beijing: guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 March 2012 06.50 GMT

1) Chinese police rescued more than 24,000 abducted women and children across the country in 2011, the Public Security Ministry said on Sunday (Gr. Tr – word order).

2) Trafficking in women and children is a big problem in China (Lex. Tr - specification), where traditional preference for male heirs and a strict one-child policy has driven a thriving market in baby boys (Lex. Tr - specification), who fetch a considerably higher price than girls. Girls and women also are abducted and used as labourers or as brides for unwed sons.

3) A report from the ministry said police rescued 8,660 abducted children and 15,458 women in 2011 as nearly 3,200 human trafficking gangs were broken up (Gr. transformation – word order).

4) It (specification) did not give any figures for the total number of women and children abducted last year (Lex. Tr - specification). Exact numbers of victims are difficult to obtain as China's vast size, rural poverty (Gr. Tr – Parts of speech substitution) and population of 1.3 billion mean many such cases never get reported (Lex. Tr - antonyms) beyond local areas.

5) The rescued children are usually put into orphanages while authorities try to reunite them with their families. In order to identify the rescued children, an "anti-abduction" DNA database has been set up ( word order+parts of speech) to match missing children with their families.

6) "Public security organs (Gr. tr. - word order) across China will deepen the campaign against abductions to save more women and children and work hard to reduce the number of abduction and trafficking cases," the ministry said. (Gr. tr. - word order)

7) The report posted on the ministry's website said there were also cases of abductions to traffic women outside of China, saying police were sent to Angola, where they helped bust a gang trafficking Chinese women for prostitution (Gr. Tr – sentence segmentation). Nineteen Chinese women were rescued and 16 suspects detained.

8) It also cited a case from July last year when police broke up a crime ring (Lex. Tr-ion - specification) where the main suspects were Vietnamese abducting children in Guangxi and Guangdong provinces in southern China (Gr. Tr – parts of speech). The ministry said that in addition to a hotline, an official microblog account has been opened to collect tips on missing cases.