Task I. Read the following text.

Are Russians superstitious?

Russians are a mystical, religious, superstitious people at heart. I recall a poet seriously counseling me once never to go back to my apartment for something I had forgotten because it was bad luck to return and to have to leave a second time. A well-educated lady instructed our family on having all members of the household sit for a moment of silence before anyone departed on a journey: evidently a holdover from religious practice, for when she rose she said: “Go with God”. Others were careful not to mention the precise destination of trips so as not to attract the attention of the evil eye.

We knew other Russians who, Orientals, put their faith in the zodiac names of the years. Still others, including intellectuals, swore that leap year is unlucky and attributed all calamities to the cause. The coming of anything as precious as a child invokes all manner of precautions. It is bad luck to pick a name in advance, bad luck to buy a present ahead of time, even worse to discuss the likely date. Russians also regard it as a bad sign, perhaps more out than conformity than superstition, if a child is a left-handed. The moment they catch it starting eat, or draw with left hand, they correct it into the right handedness.

Russians do not knock on wood so much as we but they spit figuratively over their left shoulders for the same purpose. Thirteen persons is bad luck at a table though Russian engineers do dare to put 13^th floors in their buildings.

What intrigued me was that Monday is so widely regarded as inauspicious for launching a new undertaking. Not until some friendly Russian journalist put me wise did I understand why trips for foreign correspondents so often began late Sunday rather than Monday Morning.

Any cat, not just a black cat, is a bad omen crossing ones path. But when you gat a new home, Russians said a cat should be the first creature to enter. If a bird flies in a window, it is a very bad portent of impending tragedy, possibly death or jail.

The roots of many of these superstitions seem to lie in the country-side, like the Russian fondness for proverbs or their belief in folk remedies. City people as well as peasants often prefer medicinal herbs and grasses or mustard plaster over modern drugs for simple ailments. An American friend was advised to apply a copper coin to reduce swelling. We saw Russians wearing garlic cloves around their necks to fight off a cold.

So strong are the inhibitions against shaking hands across the threshold, for fear that it foreshadows a quarrel that I came home to America hesitating to reach my hand through the open door.

(О. Леонтович. Введение в Межкультурную коммуникацию, 2007)

Task II. Translate the sentences, using the text lexis:

1. Русские избегают хвалить маленьких детей, потому что это может подвергнуть их опасности сглаза; Russians avoid to praise children so as not to attract the attention of the evil eye.

A leap year leads to all sorts of cataclysms and troubles. Some mythical and historical persons, according to the beliefs associated with the devil, were born on 29.02. In the course of history, there are a lot of terrible events that occurred exactly in a leap year.

Плохая примета, если кошка перебежала вам дорогу, или птица залетела в окно

Bad sign, if the cat ran across the road, or the bird flew out the window. It is believed that animals feel a manifestation of impure forces, so people have followed the behavior of animals and correlated it with superstitions.

Не только крестьяне, но и городские жители используют травяные лекарства, и даже горчичный пластырь