TEXT 6. Well written and badly written texts

The translator has to assess the quality and value of the writing in the source language text. The common translator's distinction between literary and non-literary texts, assuming that the importance of the first lies in its formal elements and of the second in its factual content, and therefore that the first must be translated closely and the second freely, is mistaken. An opposite, and equally misguided view is that a non-literary text, being scientific, must be accurately translated, whilst a literary text, being artistic, allows infinite licence in translation. It might be more profitable to regard the non-literary text as denotative, and therefore to be translated slavishly in all its surface detail, and the literary text as connotative, and therefore to be translated to reveal its latent meaning, to point the allegory in the story, the moral in the action, etc., as well as its sensuous qualities (sound effects, such as metre and onomatopoeia, and visual images) if one accepts Molière's dictum that the two main functions of art are to please (the senses sensuously) and to correct (morally).

However, the basic distinction is not between literary and non-literary texts, but between good (or effective) and bad (or ineffective) writing. If a text is well written, whether it is literary or scientific, historical or technological, its formal components are of prime importance, and the translator must respect them and fully account for them in his version, not by any kind of imitation but by transposing them through deep structure ('what does this really mean?') to congruent formal components. It is as misguided to talk about the 'art' of literary translation and the 'skill' of non-literary translation as to imply that science is inferior to art. The translation of poetry is often more difficult than any other kind of translation only because poetry is the only literary form that uses all the resources of languages, and therefore there are more levels of language to be accounted for.

The translator is, however, entitled to treat the formal components of a badly written text, whether popular or technical, with considerable freedom, since by replacing clumsy with elegant syntactic structures, by removing redundant or repetitive items, by reducing the cliché and the vogue-word to a plainer statement, by clarifying the emphasis and tightening up the sentence, he is attempting to give the text's semantic content its full value. (Thus he is performing a double translation, first intra-, then interlingual.) Nevertheless, the translator is often at risk in declaring a text to be badly written. A text that is ponderous, contorted and ornate, that sins against the fraudulent canons of simplicity, clarity and brevity may indeed be well written if it expresses the author's personality without distorting his message; it is only badly written if the message is lost in the conventional received jargon which appears designed to make its own irrelevant but 'with it' impression.

A translation is normally written and intended for a target language reader–even if the source language text was written for no reader at all, for nothing but its author's pleasure. The translator has to assist his reader. In plain terms, it is usually more important for him to make or indicate the sense of a passage than to funk the issue by rendering it 'correctly'. He may have to explain or transpose allusions, supply reasons, emphasize contrasts. Even if the SL text is generalized and abstracted on the analogy of non-figurative art or has what seems like surrealistic or stochastic interventions, it is his duty to make his version a little more accessible to the reader, to find at least some pattern in non-sense. Styles which are dense and intellectualized may also require assistance from the translator.

(Newmark P. Approaches to Translation. Cambridge, 1988. P. 127-128)

TEXT 7.
Translators' Introduction:
Valentin Rasputin Since The Fire

With the possible exception of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1970, Valentin Rasputin was the most gifted and influential Russian prose writer of the last thirty years of the Soviet era. During the two decades of his maturity and growing prominence in the pre-Gorbachev literary world (1965-85), Rasputin created at least a dozen masterpieces of shorter fiction (malaia proza) that have become what are known in Russian as "contemporary classics." The list includes five novellas (povesti) – Money for Maria (Den'gi dlia Marii, 1966), Borrowed Time (Poslednii srok, 1970), Live and Remember (Zhivi i pomni, 1974), Farewell to Matyora (Proshchanie s Materoi, 1976), and The Fire (Pozhar, 1985) – and several short stories that are deeply moving even when read repeatedly and that will provide pleasure and benefit for many years to come.

The distinguishing features of Rasputin's prose tales are the broad sweep of the tragic human events they depict, the penetrating psycho­logical and social realism of his character portrayals, the vividness and rugged beauty of his nature descriptions, the profundity and provocativeness of the author's philosophical digressions, the persistence and integrity of his creative consciousness at work, and, above all, the inge­nuity of his language. His lexicon and phraseology are deeply rooted in the fertile soil of Russian folk idiom. His protagonists speak a lively and colorful Siberian peasant Russian. His narration has an unhurried and majestic flow, reminiscent of his native Angara River. In reading any of Rasputin's novellas or short stories the reader gets an almost visceral satisfaction from every level of structure: isolated verb choice, sentence syntax, paragraph organization, chapter completeness, and the architectonics of the work as a whole. Rasputin is a master storyteller. There are no loose ends in his works. Moreover, his five novellas and best short stories, taken together, form an epic of Siberian village life in the twentieth century that spans several generations and chronicles the effects of two world wars, of revolution and civil chaos, of Stalinist ter­ror and collectivization – and, more recently, of forced conversion from an agricultural to a logging and industrial economy, including con­struction of massive hydroelectric power plants and the flooding of once-populated river banks, in transforming a thriving rural culture almost beyond recognition.

Rasputin's exalted place in the history of Russian literature is, therefore, secure. He would be considered an outstanding writer had he created nothing other than Live and Remember and Farewell to Matyora. In view of his collected oeuvres, Rasputin ranks at least as high as his nineteenth-century forebears Ivan Goncharov and Nikolay Leskov; he is one of the few living Russian writers who could conceivably be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

Since the mid-1970s Rasputin has chosen a more direct means than belles lettres to speak out on issues of general human concern. Writing in the genres of the essay (ocherk), the prepared interview (interv'iu), the book preface (predislovie), and the anniversary com­memoration, he has addressed a wide variety of topics while concen­trating on the following: contemporary Russian literature, especially "village prose" (derevenskaia proza); the craft and obligations of the writer in society; the history of Russians in Siberia and their relation­ships with the indigenous Siberian tribes and with the central Russian (and Soviet) authorities in Saint Petersburg and Moscow; the dangers of destroying Lake Baikal and other precious natural resources and his­torical landmarks; and the restoration of Russian national conscious­ness, pride, and patriotism in an era when Russians are often blamed for the horrors of the calamitous Soviet experiment.

(Winchell M., Mikkelson J. Translator's introduction // Sibiria, Sibiria / Valentin Rasputin. Nothwestern University Press, Evanstone, Illinois, 1997. P. 1–2)

TEXT 8.
Language, speech and writing

What I am concerned with in this chapter is not language in the most general sense of the term 'language' but with what can be described more fully as natural human language. Arguably, this fuller description is redundant in respect of either or both of the two adjectives, 'natural' and 'human'. Indeed, this is the view that most linguists and many philosophers of language would take. But it is worth making the point explicit and concentrating for a moment upon the implications of both of the qualifying adjectives, without prejudice to the question of whether there is any language, properly so called, that is non-natural or non-human.

Without dwelling upon the details let us say that a natural language is one that has not been specially constructed, whether for general or specific purposes, and is acquired by its users without special instruction as a normal part of the process of maturation and socialization. In terms of this rough-and-ready operational definition, there are some thousands of distinct natural human languages used in the world today, including English, Quechua, Dyirbal, Yoruba and Malayalam - to list just a few, each of which is representative, in various ways, of hundreds or thousands of others. But Esperanto, on the one hand, and first-order predicate calculus or computer languages such as algol, fortran and basic, on the other, are non-natural. Many non-natural languages are parasitic, to a greater or less extent, upon pre-existing natural languages. This being so, though non-natural, they are not necessarily unnatural; they may be comparable, structurally and perhaps also functionally, with the natural languages from which they derive and upon which, arguably, they are parasitic. I say 'arguably', not only because the point, as I have put it, is debatable, but also because by putting it in this way I am hinting at a deeper and theoretically more interesting sense of 'natural', and of its contrary 'unnatural', than my operational definition of 'natural language' requires.

It has been argued, notably by Chomsky, that languages that meet my operational, and intuitively applicable, definition of 'natural' do so, not simply as a matter of historical contingency, but by virtue of biological necessity: that natural human languages are structurally adapted to the psychological nature of man; and that if they were not so adapted, they could not be acquired, as I have said they are, without special instruction as an integral and normal part of the process of maturation and socialization. The question of whether natural human languages as we know them are also natural in this deeper sense (which I distinguish from other senses of 'natural' in Chapter 4 below) is of course philosophically controversial. I am not concerned with this question as such. It suffices for my present purpose that Chomsky and others inspired by his work, philosophers and psycholo­gists, have provided a serious defence of innatism (or nativism).

Granted that it is appropriate to use the term 'language' to refer to a wide range of communicative and symbolic systems employed by animals and machines, we can proceed to distinguish human from non-human languages. And this distinction can be drawn in various ways: we can define human languages as languages that are actually used by human beings; as languages that could be used by human beings (with what is meant by could spelt out); as languages that are normally or naturally (in one or other sense of 'naturally') used by human beings and so on. For present purposes, the following operational definition will suffice: a human language is one that is attested as being used (or as having been used in the past) by human beings; and a non-human language is one that is (or has been) used by any non-human being (either an animal or a machine). This definition leaves open the possibility that the intersection of the two sub-classes of languages thus distinguished is non-empty; i.e., that there are languages which are both human and non-human. It also presupposes, of course, that we have some way of identifying human beings that does not make the possession of language criterial in their identification. It would not do for us to adopt Schleicher's (1863) attitude: "If a pig were to say to me 'I am a pig', it would ipso facto cease to be a pig."

As with the distinction between natural and non-natural languages, so too with the distinction between human and non-human languages, as I have just drawn it; it can be argued that human languages share a number of structural properties, or design characteristics, that set them off as a class from the languages of other species, so that it is legitimate to talk not only of human languages, but also of human language in the singular. It is by coupling the two predicates 'natural' and 'human' and giving to each its deeper sense that we arrive of course at the characteristically Chomskyan thesis of innatism. As Chomsky put it in his Reflections on Language: "A human language is a system of remarkable complexity. To come to know a human language would be an extraordinary intellectual achievement for a creature not specifically designed to accomplish this task. A normal child acquires this knowledge on relatively slight exposure and without specific training" (1976: 4).

It is an obvious, but none the less important, fact that one cannot possess or use language (henceforth I shall restrict the term 'language' to natural human language) without possessing or using some particular language -English, Quechua, Dyirbal, Yoruba, Malayalam, or whatever. Each of these differs systematically from the others, so that, due allowance being made for the well-known problems of drawing a sharp distinction between languages and dialects, styles or registers, we can usually determine that someone is using one language rather than another on particular occasions. We do this, whether as investigating linguists or as participating interlocutors, by observing and analysing, not the language-behaviour itself, but the products of that behaviour - strings of words and phrases inscribed (in a technical sense of Inscribe') in some appropriate physical medium. But the language, for the linguist at least, is neither the behaviour nor the products of that behaviour, both of which are subsumed under the ambiguous English word 'utterance'. What the linguist is interested in is the language-system: the underlying, abstract, system of entities and rules by virtue of which particular language-inscriptions can be identified as tokens of the same type or distinguished as tokens of different types; can be parsed (to use the traditional term) or (in Chomskyan terminology) assigned an appropriate structural description; and can be interpreted in terms of the meaning of the constituent expressions, of the grammatical structure of the sentences that have been uttered, and of the relevant contextual factors.

We may distinguish the language-system, then, on the one hand from language-behaviour of a particular kind and on the other from language-inscriptions. The latter, together with native speakers' intuitions of grammaticality and acceptability, of sameness and difference of meaning, and so on, constitute the linguist's data; but they are not the object of linguistic theory or linguistic description. The linguist, I repeat, is interested in language-systems; and this is true not only in microlinguistics but also in the several branches of macrolinguistics (see Chapter 2).

And when linguists come to describe language-systems, whether they subscribe to the aims of generative grammar or not, they do so by drawing a distinction between phonology and syntax and by making reference, in the description of both, as also in the account that they give of the meaning of sentences, to the information that is stored in the lexicon, or dictionary.

(Lyons J. Natural Language and Universal Grammar // Essays in Linguistic Theory. vol. 1. Cambridge University Press, 1991. P.1–3)

TEXT 9.
Linguistic theory and theoretical linguistics

One of my aims in this chapter, which complements the preceding one, is to motivate a distinction between two terms that are currently employed by most linguists as synonyms and to use this terminological distinction as a peg upon which to hang some comments about the present state of linguistics. The terms in question are linguistic theory' and 'theoretical linguistics'. Another aim is to comment further upon the theoretical term 'language-system' in relation to Saussure's terms 'langue' and 'langage'.

The distinction between 'linguistic theory' and 'theoretical linguistics' is by no means the only terminological distinction that I shall be drawing, here and in other chapters of this book. I do not wish to give the impression, however, that my sole (or primary) concern is at any point purely terminological. I am much more interested in the metatheoretical or methodological issues that the use of one term rather than another, or of one term in addition to another, helps us to identify. As far as the terms 'theoretical linguistics' and 'linguistic theory' are concerned, I wish to suggest that, if they are kept distinct, each of them can be usefully employed to refer to what have now emerged, or are in process of emerging, as two rather different, but equally important, sub-branches of linguistics.

When my Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics (1968a) was published, more than twenty years ago, it was hailed by Bar-Hillel as "the first [book of its kind]... to carry the long overdue adjective 'theoretical' in its title" (1969:449). It is worth noting in this connexion that, although most of the foreign-language editions did not hesitate to use the equivalent of 'theoretical' in the title, the publishers of both the French and German versions seem to have felt that the use of this adjective was not so much overdue as, in this case at least, premature or inapposite. In preference to (the equivalent of) 'theoretical linguistics' the former chose (the equivalent of) 'general linguistics' and the latter (the equivalent of) 'modern lingu­istics'. The term 'modern linguistics' is of no interest to us in the present context, but 'general linguistics' is; and I will come back to it below. Another review of my book, more critical than Bar-Hillel's and written from a more or less orthodox Chomskyan, or generativist, point of view - more orthodox, incidentally, than I myself have held either then or since - was published in Language (Starosta, 1971). It rightly drew attention to my failure to develop, seriously and consistently, the implications of the programmatic opening sentence, "Linguistics may be defined as the scientific study of language" (Lyons, 1968a: 1), and of obiter dicta ("statements with theoretical import... scattered in odd places throughout the book"; Starosta, 1971: 431) to the effect that one of "the proclaimed aims" of linguistics is "the construction of a scientific theory of human language" (Lyons, 1968a: 45).

This criticism was, I think, well founded. And I would now concede, further, that in the Introduction I not only failed to define 'theoretical linguistics' (tacitly identifying it with 'general linguistics' or even with 'linguistics' tout court), but I adopted far too narrow a view of its subject matter. In effect, I restricted the scope of theoretical linguistics to what I would now characterize as general, theoretical, synchronic microlinguistics (cf. Lyons, 1981a: 34-37). I still think that this constitutes the central and most distinctive part of theoretical linguistics (for reasons that I have explained in the preceding chapter). But I certainly do not believe that diachronic linguistics is intrinsically less theoretical than synchronic; that such branches of macrolinguistics as sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics, or stylistics are, by virtue of their data and the questions they address, less theoretical than microlinguistics; or even (though I grant that this is more debatable) that descriptive linguistics (i.e. the description of particular language-systems) is necessarily less theoretical than general linguistics (i.e., the study of language in general). I will not labour this point (though it has been much misunderstood by linguists) but shall take it for granted in all that follows.

The view of theoretical linguistics that I put forward in my 1968 textbook was more restricted than I now think it ought to have been in at least one other respect. Having started by defining linguistics, programmatically and perhaps tendentiously, as "the scientific study of language", I confined my attention thereafter to what is arguably but a subclass of languages – a subclass of which English, French, Italian, Chinese, Arabic, etc. are held to be members and exemplars. Such languages may be referred to as N-languages (see Chapter 4). I shall have more to say about the properties of N-languages presently. An initial and provisional indication of the membership of the subclass of languages that I am referring to can be provided.

(Lyons J. Natural Language and Universal Grammar // Essays in Linguistic Theory. vol. 1. Cambridge University Press, 1991. P. 27–28)

TEXT 10.
Introduction to Edgar Allan Poe's “Tales of Mystery and Imagination”

…Since the 1950s, Edgar Allan Рое has, like so many classic American writers, become an academic industry. A visit to a university library will reveal volumes examining French criticism of Рое; Рое in Russia; the image of Рое in American poetry; Рое and the British magazine tradition; the Scandinavian response to Рое; Рое, Lacan and Derrida; and one 'simply' called Рое Рое Рое Рое Рое Рое Рое (presumably because the author, like his subject, believed in the powers of incantation). Yet for most people it surely remains the case that Рое has two great claims to fame. The first is that, in his three Dupin stories ('The Murders in the Rue Morgue', 'The Mystery of Marie Rogêt' and 'The Purloined Letter'), as well as the cipher tale, 'The Gold Bug', and the least-likely-suspect story, 'Thou Art The Man', he laid the foundations for the subsequent development of the detective story. Рое can be credited with the creation or very early refinements of the locked-room convention; the Olympian detective; the less-than-brilliant associate and chronicler; the linguistic and visual puzzle; the easily dismissed police force; the murder as disruption of a small town and the solving of crime as an intellectual exercise.

The second claim to fame is as one of the greatest of all writers of horror stories; not merely because he made more sophisticated the elements he took from the European Gothic tradition, such as subterranean dangers, the femme fatale (literally so in 'The Fall of the House of Usher'), burial alive, ghosts, excessive curiosity, the curse from the past and exotic locales, but because he fashioned those elements into a remarkable investigation of abnormal psychological states and obsessional behaviour (what he chose to call 'the imp of the perverse'). In his Preface to the original edition of Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque (1840), Рое asserted that'... terror is not of Germany, but of the soul... ', thus immediately distancing himself from what he saw as outdated Gothic paraphernalia. The Gothic novel served as a major model for the early development of fiction in America. In an interesting British collection of American short stories published in 1930, I find that in the first two stories, 'Peter Rugg, The Missing Man' by William Austin (1824) and 'Rip Van Winkle' by Washington Irving (1819), both use the old Gothic notion of the man who defies a higher power and loses his place in the normal flow of time and in each case misses the change from colonies to new nation; an excellent example of the way in which a popular literary formula was used to air the stresses and nostalgias of contemporary life. One of the earliest published American novelists, Charles Brockden Brown, was a fully-fledged Gothic novelist, whose works substitute Indians for the demons of European Gothic; where humble two-storey wooden edifices, far from crumbling ruins, still hold terrors from the European past, and where the chaos of the plot mirrors the chaos of the first decades after the War of Revolution, when there seemed to be little tradition and few recognized moral and political codes to work with. Similarly, one does not have to read far into the tales and novels of a much greater American nineteenth-century writer, Nathaniel Hawthorne, to see how heavy was the influence of the European Gothic on his writing.

(Witley J.S. Introduction // Edgar Allan Poe: Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Wordsworth Classics, University of Sussex, 1993. P. 6–7)

ПРИЛОЖЕНИЕ

Список наиболее распространенных “ложных друзей” переводчика*

accuracy n точность, правильность

аккуратность regularity, carefulness, punctuality, tidiness

accurate adj точный, правильный, тщательный, калиброванный

аккуратный neat, careful, punctual, tidy

actual adj фактический, действительный

актуальный urgent, pressing, topical

actually adv фактически, действительно

актуально important

affairs n дело, вопрос; занятия, дела; событие, история

афера speculation, fraud, swindle

agent n доверенное лицо, посредник, представитель, агент

агент representative, confidential person, agent

apparatus n механическое устройство, установка, приспособление, прибор, аппарат appliance, arrangement, apparatus; staff

аппарат personnel

balloon n воздушный шар, аэростат

баллон cylinder

base n основание, фундамент; подножие; материальная основа; опора

база reserve, resources; ground; proof, centre; store or warehouse

basin n таз, чашка; водоем, резервуар; совокупность притоков реки

бассейн swimming-pool

benzene (benzine) n бензол

бензин petrol, gasoline

billion n (брит., тж. в Германии) миллион миллионов, тысяча миллиардов (1012); триллион; (амер., тж. во Франции) тысяча миллионов (109) = биллион; миллиард (амер.) billion,

биллион (брит.) milliard

cabin n хижина; будка; кабина корабля

кабина box, booth, car; cockpit

cabinet n шкаф, комод; корпус радиоприемника; состав министров

кабинет study, office, private room; laboratory

capital n столица; стоимость; заглавная буква; класс капиталистов; состояние

капитал dead stock; money, wealth, value, treasure

capital adj смертный; превосходный; главный

капитальный main; thorough, fundamental

fundamentally adv коренным образом; принципиально, существенно; в своей основе, по своей сути

фундаментально solidly, firmly; thoroughly, well (о еде)

general adj общий; всеобщий; неспециальный (общего назначения); повсеместный; постоянный; коренной; главный, ведущий; генеральный

генеральный main, basic; general

individual adj отдельный, единичный; одиночный; особый; характерный, особенный; личный, индивидуальный

индивидуальный personal; peculiar; one's own; individual; individualized; separate

information n сообщение; информация; сведения; справки; знания

информация data; (воен.) intelligence; report(s); information

instruction n обучение (чему-л.); инструктирование, инструктаж, инструкция; (мн.) директивы, наставления, указания, предписания

инструкция instruction; directions

instructive adj поучительный, полезный; содержащий в себе руководящие указания; инструктивный

инструктивный instructional; instructive

instructor n преподаватель; воспитатель; инструктор; учебник; пособие

инструктор teacher; instructor

instrument n прибор, аппарат, приспособление; орудие, (перен.) средство; (муз.) инструмент; договор, акт

инструмент tool; instrument

instrumental adj относящийся к инструментам, приборам; (перен.) служа­щий орудием, средством, способствующий чему-л.; производимый музыкальными инструментами; музыкальный; инструментальный

инструментальный tool-making (shop), tool (production); instrumental (music)

interval n промежуток, расстояние, пространство; отрезок времени, интервал; пауза (в речи, беседе); перерыв, перемена; антракт

интервал distance, space; period; interval

limit n граница, предел; предельная норма (цена, количество); предельный размер, (техн.) допуск; лимит

лимит limit, permission

machine n механизм, аппарат, устройство; станок; автомат; средство транспорта; человек, действующий подобно механизму; орудие; аппарат; машина

машина engine; machine; mechanism; machinery; vehicle; plane; car

magazine n журнал; склад (боеприпасов, вещевой, пороховой); обойма, магазин для патронов

магазин shop; store

original adj первоначальный; своеобразный, оригинальный; подлинный

оригинальный peculiar, constructive, unusual, strange; original

personal n (амер.) хроника

personnel n состав сотрудников, персонал; личный состав

персонал staff; body; personnel

petrol n бензин

petroleum n нефть, керосин; петролеум

петролеум petroleum; paraffin

physic n лекарство; терапия

physique n телосложение, конструкция; внешность

физика physics, natural science

physician n врач, доктор; терапевт; (перен.) исцелитель

physicist n физик; материалист

физик physicist; teacher of physics; student of a department of physics

piston n поршень; пистон

пистон percussion cap; valve; cap for a toy pistol; piston

principal adj главный, основной; важный; ведущий

принципиальный basic, essential, fundamental, main, radical; principled

probe n (мед.) зонд, зондирование; (техн.) зонд, щуп

проба trial, test; testing, analysis; sample; standard, fineness

procedure n порядок, образ действия; технология, технологический процесс; методика, метод; процедура, последовательность операций

процедура procedure; technique; treatment

production n процесс производства; изготовление; продукты производства; продукция; произведение (искусства); постановка (пьесы или фильма)

продукция output; yield; product(s); production; published works

profile n контур; очертания; профиль (лица); сечение

профиль profile; side-view; type, specialization

progress n движение вперед; течение; ход; переход; прогресс; достижения; успехи

прогресс progress; development; improvement; advance

project n план, замысел; схема; предложение; проект; тема; строй-проект; новостройка

проект project; projection; design; plan; draft; scheme; graduation work; thesis

prospect n вид; перспектива; ландшафт; кругозор; планы, виды на будущее (мн.), надежды (мн.), ожидания (мн.)

prospectus n проспект (книги, издания, учебного заведения и др.); план

проспект avenue; plan; summary; prospectus (of a book); advertisement, bill poster

protection n защита, предохранение; укрытие; защитное средство; охрана, покро­вительство; пропуск, паспорт

протекция patronage, influence

radical adj коренной; глубокий; основной; фундаментальный; радикальный

радикальный radical; drastic; sweeping

repetition n повторение; заучивание наизусть; копия

репетиция rehearsal

replica n копия; репродукция картины; (техн.) модель

реплика remark; retort; response; comment

resin n смола, канифоль

резина rubber

резинка eraser; elastic; sock (stocking) suspender

revolution n революция; коренной политический переворот; государственный переворот; коренное преобразование, перестройка; перемена, превращение; кругооборот; поворот; оборот

революция revolution

scale n масштаб; измерение; размер; величина; система чисел; шкала; линейка; система счисления; весы (мн.); (техн.) окалина, накипь

шкала scale; range; dial

scholar n ученый; специалист; (устар.) ученик; учащийся; способный студент, стипендиат

школяр pupil; schoolboy, schoolgirl; a dogmatist

special adj особый; индивидуальный; отличительный; основной; характерный, специальный, выдающийся; определенный, конкретный; частный

especial adj отличный от другого; особый, особенный; исключительный

специальный special

specific adj отличительный; особый; особенный; показательный; типичный; характерный; определенный; ограниченный, частный; отдельный; удельный (вес, объем); специфический

специфический (специфичный) peculiar; unique; specific

speculate v размышлять, раздумывать; делать предложения; спекулировать

спекулировать to profiteer; to gamble; to speculate; to misuse

stamp n штемпель, печать; оттиск; клеймо; почтовая или гербовая марка; отпечаток; штамп

штамп stamp; punch; cliché; stock phrase

structure n внутреннее устройство, строение; структура; строй, режим; строение, дом, здание; сооружение, каркас, постройка

структура structure; pattern; framework

subject n подданный (какого-л. государства); предмет (беседы, книги); тема; повод; вопрос; учебный предмет; субъект

субъект person; subject

 

[1] Данный перевод является компиляцией переводов, выполненных студентами.

* Lingua Franca is a pidgin, a trade language used by numerous language communities around the Mediterranean, to communicate with others whose language they did not speak. It is, in fact, the mother of all pidgins, seemingly in use since the Middle Ages and surviving until the nineteenth century, when it disappeared with hardly a trace, probably under the onslaught of the triumphant French language, leaving only a few anecdotal quotations in the writings of travelers or observers… Like other pidgins, it had a limited vocabulary and a sharply circumscribed grammar, and lacked those things, such as verb tenses and case endings, that add specificity to human speech. The language was never written. No poetry, no folktales, no translation of the Bible, just a way to sell the merchandise you had to offer, or haggle for a better price on its purchase. Observers noted that the words constituting this pidgin were mainly of Romance origin, in particular, Italian, Spanish and Occitan, a language occupying an intermediate position between Spanish and French… Lingua Franca seemed to be lost forever, since it died before the advent of the tape recorder or of anthropologists anxious to record a moribund form of human speech, however bizarre, and even laughable, it may have seemed. –

http://www.uwm.edu/~corre/franca/edition3/index.html

* Голикова Ж. А. Перевод с английского на русский = Learn to Translate by Translating from English into Russian: учеб. пособие. М.: Новое знание, 2003. 287 с.