TEXTS TO BE TRANSLATED IN THE PRACTICE CLASSES

2015-2016
TEXT 1
The most commonly used metals and alloys for household and decorative
purposes are aluminium, brass, bronze, copper, pewter, silver (and silver plate), steel
and stainless steel; iron is chiefly used with an enamelled or galvanised finish (apart
from decorative articles of wrought iron); tin and chromium plate are mainly used as a
coating for other metals.
Great advances have been made in recent years in both the production and the
application of stainless finishes, especially stainless steel and chromium plate, which
have done so much to reduce metal-cleaning.
Dust and rub up metal articles and fittings regularly with a soft cloth avoiding
the use of anything rough which might scratch the surface.
Tarnish appears on certain metals when exposed to the air; both moisture and
warmth increase the speed with which it forms (particularly in the case of copper, brass,
silver, lead and iron). So far a possible, therefore, avoid metal articles in a damp
atmosphere; those made of copper and brass can often be given a coat of lacquer as a
protection, but they do not then have quite the same soft glow as with ordinary
polishing.
Rust is the other great enemy of iron, steel and tinned iron, although a number
of rust-proofing treatments have been evolved.
To remove rust, clean the article with a wire brush. For severe rusting, apply
paraffin and leave for several hours, then rub with an emery cloth. Alternatively, use one
of the good proprietary rust-removing liquids.
To protect iron, steel and tinned articles from rust during storage, the traditional
method is to rub them over with one of the following, taking care to coat the entire
surface: petroleum jelly mixed to a thin paste with paraffin; paraffin wax mixed with
turpentine; plain petroleum jelly, salt-free lard or lanolin. Wrap the articles in
greaseproof paper and then in several layers of newspaper or brown paper or fold them
closely in aluminium foil; tie up securely.
(Good Housekeepings Encyclopaedia)

TEXT 2
The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and, when the light summer
wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy
scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.
From the corner of the divan of Persian saddlebags on which he was lying,
smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just

catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose
tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as
theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long
tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind
of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters
of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey
the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way
though the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty
gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive.
The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.
(Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray)

TEXT 3
A well-known scientist (some say it was Bertrand Russell) once gave a public
lecture on astronomy. He described how the earth orbits around the sun and how the
sun, in turn, orbits around the center of a vast collection of stars called our galaxy. At
the end of the lecture, a little old lady at the back of the room got up and said: What
you have told us is rubbish. The world is really a flat plate supported on the back of a
giant tortoise. The scientist gave a superior smile before replying, What is the tortoise
standing on? Youre very clever, young man, very clever, said the old lady. But its
turtles all the way down!.
Most people would find the picture of our universe as an infinite tower of
tortoises rather ridiculous, but why do we think we know better?. What do we know
about the universe, and how do we know it?. Where did the universe come from, and
where is it going?. Did the universe have a beginning, and if so, what happened before
then?. What is the nature of time?. Will it ever come to an end?. Recent breakthroughs
in physics, made possible in part by fantastic new technologies, suggest answers to
some of these longstanding questions. Someday these answers may seem as obvious to
us as the earth orbiting the sun or perhaps as ridiculous as a tower of tortoises. Only
time (whatever that may be) will tell.

TEXT 4
Intel and FTC agree to talk. By Ashlee Vance
Intel has reached a legal cease-fire with the Federal Trade Commission.
Late Monday afternoon, Intel issued a statement that said it will work on a possible
settlement with the F.T.C. over a case filed last December. The commissions complaint
raised charges that Intel abused its position in the chip market and followed a string of
similar complaints made by antitrust prosecutors worldwide.
The two parties will put a hold on filings related to the case as they have discussions
about a consent order, Intel said in the statement. The hold button will be pressed until
July 22, when things would fire back into action absent an agreement.

Intel has appeared determined to settle its cases in the United States. Last November, it
agreed to pay Advanced Micro Devices $1.25 billion to end its legal squabbles.
Intel continues to face an antitrust lawsuit filed in New York. The commissions
complaint stood out from some of the other grumbles because it challenged Intels place
in the graphics chip market, where Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices have strong
positions. Most of the other complaints had centered on PC and server chips. Last
month, Intel revealed that it has halted plans to create a graphics chip that would
compete head-to-head against Nvidia and A.M.D. in the largest part of the graphics
market.

TEXT 5: Textual equivalence

Imagine you have been invited to join a team of translators to produce a version of the
Macmillan Encyclopaedia in your target language. Your assignment is to translate all the
entries on people. You will therefore need to be particularly careful about handling
referential chains in your translated version. Translate the following entries into your
target language, paying particular attention to the ways in which different participants
are traced in each entry. Comment on any differences in patterns of reference in the
source and target versions of each entry:
Elizabeth I (1533-1603) Queen of England and Ireland (1558-1603), daughter of Henry
VIII and Anne Boleyn. Her mothers execution and Elizabeths imprisonment by Mary I
made her cautious and suspicious but her devotion to England made her one of its
greatest monarchs. Her religious compromise (1559-63) establishes Protestantism in
England (see Reformation). Several plots to place her Roman Catholic cousin, Mary,
Queen of Scots, on the throne led to Marys execution (1587). England won a greater
naval victory in 1588 by destroying the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth never married and
was called the Virgin Queen, although her relationships with, among others, the Earl of
Leicester and the 2nd Earl of Essex caused considerable speculation.
Van Gogh, Vincent (1853-90) Dutch postimpressionist painter, born at Zundert, the son
of a pastor. He worked as an art dealer, a teacher in England, and a missionary among
coalminers before taking up painting in about 1880. His early works were chiefly
drawings of peasants. After a limited training in The Hague and Antwerp, where he
studied the works of Rubens and Japanese prints, he moved to Paris 81886). Here he
briefly adopted the style of impressionism and later pointillism. In Arles in 1888 he
painted his best-known works orchards, sunflowers, and the local postman and his
family but only one painting was sold during his lifetime. The visit of his friend
Gauguin ended in a quarrel during which Van Gogh cut off part of his own left ear. In
1889 he entered a mental asylum at Saint Rmy. The ominous Wheatfield with Crows
(Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam) was painted shortly before his suicide. His letters to
his brother (Theo) contain the best account of his life and work. See expressionism.

TEXT 6
Sitting in the car with the little package on the seat beside him, he thought, I
have only now to choose the date. He didn't start his car for quite a while: he was
touched by a feeling of awe as if he had in fact been given his death sentence by the
doctor. His eyes dwelt on the neat blob of sealing-wax like a dried wound. He thought, I
have still got to be careful, so careful. If possible, no one must even suspect. It was not
only the question of his life insurance, the happiness of others had to be protected. It
was not so easy to forget a suicide as a middle-aged man's death from angina.
He unsealed the package and studied the directions. He had no knowledge of
what a fatal dose might be, but surely if he took ten times the correct amount, he would
be safe. That meant every night for nine nights removing a dose and keeping it secretly
for use on the tenth night.
Graham Greene, The Heart of the Matter
TEXT 7 . New York is just a concrete jungle. Tell it to the birds
What are the main sights in Manhattan and Washington DC? Rose-breasted grosbeaks
and magnolia warblers, of course, says Michael McCarthy. They mostly go to
Strawberry Fields for one purpose: to remember John Lennon. It is a landscaped area of
New York's Central Park, named after the Beatles' song "Strawberry Fields Forever" and
situated across the way from the Dakota Building where Lennon lived for the last years
of his life with Yoko Ono, and where, on 8 December 1980, Mark Chapman, a deranged
fan, shot him dead.
Strawberry Fields is one of the park's most pleasant areas, a series of wooded arbours
and shrubberies, and its focal point is a circular mosaic inlaid with the single word that
proclaims the title of one of Lennon's best-known songs: "Imagine". It's 8am on a
beautiful May morning, but already the tourists are beginning to crowd around the
mosaic and more are coming into the park; I am watching them with one eye, yet one
eye only, because from where I am standing, a hundred yards away, I can see something
that excites me even more than the memorial to the dead Beatle, moving though that is.
It is a bird. It is a plump, chunky bird, high in a tree, and its colours are stunning: it has
a black head and back, white wingbars and white underparts and a breast of an exquisite
red, which is a sort of fiery crimson. It is a rose-breasted grosbeak, and it is calling in on
Central Park to rest and refuel on its spring migration from its wintering grounds in the
Caribbean to America's northern forests, where it will breed
TEXT 8 . Inflationary virus
Rises in the prices of oil are spreading like an inflationary virus throughout western
economies and causing real damage to macro-economic figures. In France and
Germany, the two great European economic powerhouses, oil derivative costs are
behind the increase of inflation to 1.7 % and 1.9%, respectively. In Spain the price index
stood at 3.4% at the end of June. The government has acknowledged that it will be
impossible to meet the 2% inflation target set for the end of the year. The deviation will

create tensions in collective wage bargaining, in drafting the next national budget
(unions are already planning to demand salary rises of between 3% and 3.5 % for civil
servants) and in the progress of employment. Economists are now recalling an old
adage: todays inflation is tomorrows unemployment.

TEXT 9. MAASTRICHT TREATY

Title I. Common provisions
Article A
By this Treaty, the HIGH CONTRACTING PARTIES establish among themselves a
EUROPEAN UNION, hereinafter called 'the Union'.
This Treaty marks a new stage in the process of creating an ever closer union among the
peoples of Europe, in which decisions are taken as closely as possible to the citizen.
The Union shall be founded on the European Communities, supplemented by the
policies and forms of cooperation established by this Treaty. Its task shall be to
organize, in a manner demonstrating consistency and solidarity, relations between the
Member States and between their peoples.
Article B
The Union shall set itself the following objectives:

to promote economic and social progress which is balanced and sustainable, in

particular through the creation of an area without internal frontiers, through the
strengthening of economic and social cohesion and through the establishment of
economic and monetary union, ultimately including a single currency in
accordance with the provisions of this Treaty;
to assert its identity on the international scene, in particular through the
implementation of a common foreign and security policy including the eventual
framing of a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common
defence;
to strengthen the protection of the rights and interests of the nationals of its
Member States through the introduction of a citizenship of the Union;
to develop close cooperation on justice and home affairs;
to maintain in full the acquis communautaire and build on it with a view to
considering, through the procedure referred to in Article N(2), to what extent the
policies and forms of cooperation introduced by this Treaty may need to be
revised with the aim of ensuring the effectiveness of the mechanisms and the
institutions of the Community.

The objectives of the Union shall be achieved as provided in this Treaty and in
accordance with the conditions and the timetable set out therein while respecting
the principle of subsidiarity as defined in Article 3b of the Treaty establishing the
European Community

TEXT 10
The singing of this song threw the animals into the wildest excitement. Almost
before Major had reached the end, they had begun singing it for themselves. Even the
stupidest of them had already picked up the tune and a few words, and as for the clever
ones, such as the pigs and dogs, they had the entire song by heart within a few minutes.
And then, after a few preliminary tries, the whole farm burst out into Beasts of
England in tremendous unison. The cows lowed it, the dogs whined it, the sheep
bleated it, and the horses whinnied it, the ducks quacked it. They were so delighted with
the song that they sang it through five times in succession, and might have continued
singing it all night if they had not been interrupted.
Unfortunately, the uproar awoke Mr Jones, who sprang out of bed, feeling sure
that there was a fox in the yard. He seized the gun which always stood in a corner of his
bedroom, and let fly a charge of number six shot into the darkness. The pellets buried
themselves in the wall of the barn and the meeting broke up hurriedly. Everyone fled to
this own sleeping place. The birds jumped on to their perches, the animals settled down
in the straw, and the whole farm was asleep in a moment.
Animal Farm by George Orwell.
TEXT 11
The Biosphere
(By G. Evelyn Hutchinson)
The idea of the biosphere was introduced into science rather casually almost a century
ago by the Austrian geologist Eduard Suess, who first used the term in a discussion of
the various envelopes of the earth in the last and most general chapter of a short book on
the genesis of the Alps published in 1875. The concept played little part in scientific
thought, however, until the publication, first in Russian in 1926 and later in French in
1929 (under the title La Biosphre), of two lectures by the Russian mineralogist
Vladimir Ivanovitch Vernadsky. It is essentially Vernadskys concept of the biosphere,
developed about 50 years after Suess wrote, that we accept today. Vernadsky considered
that the idea ultimately was derived from the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck,
whose geochemistry, although archaically expressed, was often quite penetrating.
The biosphere is defined as that part of the earth in which life exists, but this definition
immediately raises some problems and demands some qualifications. At considerable
altitudes above the earths surface the spores of bacteria and fungi can be obtained by
passing air through filtres. In general, however, such aeroplankton do not appear to be
engaged in active metabolism. Even on the surface of the earth there are areas too dry,
too cold or too hot to support metabolizing organisms (except technically equipped
human explorers), but in such places also spores are commonly found. Thus as a
terrestrial envelope the biosphere obviously has a somewhat irregular shape, inasmuch
as it is surrounded by an indefinite parabiospheric region in which some dormant
forms of life are present. Today, of course, life can exist in a space capsule or a space
suit far outside the natural biosphere. Such artificial environments may best be regarded
as small volumes of the biosphere nipped off and projected temporarily into space.

What is it that is so special about the biosphere as a terrestrial envelope? The answer
seems to have three parts. First, it is a region in which liquid water can exist in
substantial quantities. Second, it receives an ample supply of energy from an external
source, ultimately from the sun. And third, within it there are interfaces between the
liquid, the solid and the gaseous states of matter.
Scientific American (223,3)

TEXT 12
Then there was a vicious snarling in the mouth of the shelter and the plunge and
thump of living things. Someone tripped over Ralph and Piggys corner became a
complication of snarls and crashes and flying limbs. Ralph hit out; then he and what
seemed like a dozen others were rolling over and over, hitting, biting, scratching. He
was torn and jolted, found fingers in his mouth and bit them. A fist withdrew and came
back like a piston, so that the whole shelter exploded into light. Ralph twisted sideways
on op of a writhing body and left no breath on his cheek. He began to pound the mouth
below him, using his clenched fist as a hammer; he hit with more and more passionate
hysteria as the face became slippery. A Knee jerked up between his legs and he fell
sideways, busying himself with his pain, and the fight rolled over him. Then the shelter
collapsed with smothering finality; and the anonymous shapes fought their way out and
through. Dark figures drew themselves out of the wreckage and flitted away, till the
screams of the littluns and Piggys gasps were once more audible.
Ralph called out in a quavering voice.
All you littluns, go to sleep. We ve had a fight with the others. Now go to
sleep.
Sammeric came close and peered at Ralph.
Are you two all right?
I think so -
- I got busted.
So did I. Hows Piggy?
They hauled Piggy clear of the wreckage and leaned him against a tree. The
night was cool and purged of immediate terror. Piggys breathing was a little easier.
(Lord of the Flies. William Golding)

TEXT 13
Human Embryos in the Laboratory
(By R.G. Edwards and Ruth E. Fowler)
The fertilization and the subsequent development of the human egg are normally
inaccesible to observation. Much effort has been directed toward understanding the
sequence of events in invertebrate animals such as the sea urchin and the frog and also
in many species of mammals. The study of laboratory species such as the mouse and the
rabbit has provided a great deal of information about fertilization.
Mammalian ocytes, or immature eggs, must reach a particular stage of development
before they can be fertilized. Normally they mature in the ovary. It is possible to induce
maturation by administering certain reproductive hormones to the female animal, and it
is also possible to stimulate maturation artificially by putting the ocytes in a culture
medium. In laboratories at the Ildham General Hospital in Lancashire and at the
University of Cambridge human eggs have now been successfully brought to maturity,
fertilized in vitro and cultured in vitro to the blastocyst stage of development, which is
the stage immediately preceding the beginning of normal implantation of the fertilized
egg in the uterus. We foresee that this work will have important physiological and
clinical consequences. Since it will be possible to observe in the laboratory (1) the
maturation of the egg through the stages just preceding ovulation, (2) the fertilization of
the egg and (3) its development to the blastocyst stage, the nature of these events should
become much clearer. Clinically it should be possible with these procedures to
circumvent certain causes of infertility and to avert the development of embryos that
otherwise could be expected to grow abnormally.
Still further possibilities can be imagined. Eggs fertilized in the laboratory and
cultivated to the blastocyst stage could be transferred back to the mother with an
excellent chance of completing development normally. Since there would be several
blastocysts from one couple, a degree of selection could be exercised in deciding which
one to return to the mother. For example, the sex of the baby could be predetermined.
(Scientific American, 223, 6)

TEXT 14
The Fairytale Route
Seven hundred years on, the town of Hamelin once again suffered a plague of rats and
newspapers around the World gleefully picked up the story. In 2012, hungry rodents
destroyed the illumination of a small public fountain, an event which would never have
made it past a small articles in the local newspaper had we not been talking about the
town made famous by the Brothers Grimm as the setting of their tale The Pied Piper of
Hamelin. The influence that those two German storytellers have had on generations of
listeners has been, and continues to be, enormous. Now you can get a taste of this on a
five hundred kilometre route between Hamburg and Frankfurt.
It is not that the A5, the A1 and the A7 are especially lovely motorways; however if,
instead of stopping off at petro stations and services, you come a little further off the
main roads, then you can eat a snack by Rapunzels castle or have a picnic in Little Red

Riding Hoods wood (Dont worry, no wolves have been spotted in these parts for many
a long year). More than sixty towns and villages that appear in the tales of Jacob and
Wilhelm Grimm mark the route between Hamburg and Frankfurt. The fame of the
stories is such that a fairytale route has sprung up between the two cities. Close to
Hamburg is the first storybook town: Buxtehude. This place gets us in the mood, with
the half-timbered facades, Gothic churches and narrow alleyway that will accompany us
on our trip. This was the setting for the Brothers Grimm version of the classic about the
tortoise and the hare, although replacing the reptile with a hedgehog and adding a
blood-spattered ending to add bite to the moral.
It is a little known fact that the titular performers of The Town Musicians of Bremen
never actually reach the city, but end up living in a farmhouse on the way. However, this
has not stopped Bremen from making the four animals the citys symbol. Outside the
City Hall (which, incidentally, has the highest alcohol content of any in the country. it
houses an ancient wine cellar boasting 650 types of wine) is a statue commemorating
the animal musicians.