Translation Exercises for Lecture 8:
Exercise A.
The sentence for the exercise is taken from Five Tales by John Galsworthy,
whose preceding sentences in the same paragraph are:
In their silver-wedding day Ashurst and his wife were motoring along the outskirts of the moor,
intending to crown the festival by stopping for the night at Torquay, where they had first met. This
was the idea of Stella Ashurst, whose character contained a streak of sentiment.
Translate the following
If she had long lost the blue-eyed, flower-like charm, the cool slim purity of face and
form, the apple-blossom coloring which had so swiftly and oddly affected him
twenty-six years ago, she was still at forty-three a comely and faithful companion,
whose cheeks were faintly mottled, and whose grey-blue eyes had acquired a certain
fullness.
Exercise. B.
Translate the following sentences or short paragraphs, paying attention to
accuracy in comprehension and conciseness in expression of your
comprehension:
1. He just makes it easy.
2. The singer rose to stardom soon after her introduction.
3. Even if you are on a budget, you can find better bargains elsewhere.
4. With all due respect, the premise of your question is incorrect.
5. You only live once, but if you work it right, once is enough.
6. Chrysler is burning through cash rapidly as it moves to slash vast production.
7 If under the contract the buyer is to specify the form, measurement or other features
of the goods and he fails to make such specification either on the date agreed upon
or within a reasonable time after receipt of a request from the seller, the seller may,
without prejudice to any other rights he may have, make the specification himself in
accordance with the requirements of the buyer that may be known to him.
8 The most complex lesson the literary point of view teaches – and it is not, to be sure,
a lesson available to all, and is even difficult to keep in mind once acquired – is to
allow the intellect to become subservient to the heart. What wide reading teaches is
the richness, the complexity, the mystery of life. In the wider and longer view, I
have come to believe, there is something deeply apolitical – something above
politics – in literature, despite what feminist, Marxist, and other politicized literary
critics may think. If at the end of a long life of reading the chief message you bring
away is that women have had it lousy, or that capitalism stinks, or that attention
must above all be paid to victims, then I’d say you just might have missed
something crucial. Too bad, for there probably isn’t time to go back to re-read your
lifetime’s allotment of five thousand or so books. People who have read with love
and respect understand that the larger message behind all books, great and good and
even some not so good as they might be, is, finally, cultivate your sensibility so that
you may trust your heart. The charmingly ironic point of vast reading, at least as I
have come to understand it, is to distrust much of one’s education. Unfortunately,
the only way properly to despise success is first to achieve it.