A. Find names that defy traditional transcription rules.
B. Think of the titles of Darwin’s and Galileo’s works – are you aware of their Bulgarian translations?
C. What do you know of "the human condition”? How do you propose to translate it, considering all its philosophical implications?
‘Galileo, Copernicus - and now Dolly!’
by Andrew Marr
In the past few days, we have lived through a change in the human condition as momentous as the Copernican revolution or the splitting of the atom. In the sheepish gaze of Dolly from Edinburgh, awesome possibilities glitter. We can imagine, just a little, how it must have felt to be a Tuscan Jesuit reading Galileo’s Dialogue on astronomy, or a pious Londoner settling down 250 years later with a copy of the Origin of Species.
Ian Wilmut, the embryologist who led the team which created Dolly by cloning, has downplayed the implications. You could clone humans, he admits, but all of us would find that offensive.
No doubt. But humans will be cloned, and probably soon. Not here - the making of Dolly was a great achievement for British science, but the UK is also one of a handful of countries with thought-through legislation which bans human cloning. Yet if it can be done, it will be done. The human instinct to experiment and explore cannot and will not be reined in by legislators, commissions or priests. (Ask Galileo.) There are serious difficulties still.. We must therefore work on the assumption that cloned humans will be created within a few years and start to think through the consequences.
Cloning seems to challenge the deep ideas of self, identity and soul on which human society has relied throughout history. Some deny this and argue that because humans are the result of their environment, as well as their genes, clones would have unique souls. Yet we are only just beginning to absorb the knowledge of just how much of our personalities, choices and behaviour are genetically programmed. Edward O Wilson, the founder of sociobiology, described the human brain as an exposed negative waiting to be slipped into developer liquid: "The print is the individual's genetic history, over thousands of years of evolution and there is not much anybody can do about it." Many of our moral "choices" are already printed on the hypothalamus and limbic regions of the brain. This is the intellectual context surrounding the Edinburgh breakthrough in cloning. And cloning is "like" the Copernican-Galilean revolution, or Darwin's discovery of evolution, in that it radically humbles mankind. In religious terminology, we are both blessed and damned: we have the brilliance, the biological specialness, to understand our own ordinariness. It is a glorious paradox. Like sociobiology and evolution, cloning is both a human triumph and an undignified moment of biological self-recognition. As a species, we come from apes. As individual members of it, we are heavily pre-programmed by genes. Now we can reproduce ourselves without sex, with a piece of our own skin, or hair. The question is, will it change us? Will it release amoral, barbaric behaviour?
The novelist Fay Weldon, whose book The Cloning of Joanna May confronted some of the issues, thinks of it as an escape from fate. "I don't see that nature has done such a good job that we can't improve on it . . . I think it is rather primitive of us to be so fearful of ourselves." She suggests, only half-jokingly, that one day, instead of rewarding great achievers with peerages, the government will give them cloning certificates. Certainly, the history of science gives little cause for optimism among those who would use political authority to ban new thinking, or new research. Tom Wilkie, the Independent writer who has moved to the Wellcome Trust as senior policy analyst, points out that the "yuk factor" tends to dominate early reactions to biological advance - but then moral attitudes evolve. For instance, until 1950 it was considered immoral and was illegal to use the corneas of dead people to save the sight of the living. (The law was changed after a campaign by the then science editor of the Daily Mirror.) Now it is considered almost as immoral not to carry a donor card. In the end, I find it difficult to believe that we cannot live with our own growing skill. Moral codes can depend as well on an understanding of own origins, wiring and organic connection with the rest of the living world, as on older, fiercely contested beliefs about divinity and fate. Science can make you humble as well as arrogant; religion can make you arrogant as well as humble. Galileo, after all, was considered a heretical menace to faith and morality - the sentence passed by the Inquisition was only finally retracted in October 1992. And Charles Darwin was thought to be a herald of the death of human dignity. But we have somehow survived even our own growing understanding. Soon, the first human created from a piece of skin will be born. And the world will seem to shudder a little, and spin on.
And we will find the world a little more extraordinary than it seemed the day before, and carry on too, mixing our genes with the help of music, alcohol and eye-contact, rather than needles and petri-dishes.
Exercises and guiding notes I. Focus on:
• False friends! Beware! – Momentous, Political authority, organic
• Mind the collocations! – Splitting the atom, Blessed and damned,
• Hark! Polysemy! – Settle down with a book, Some argue that, Developer, Wiring
• New coinages - watch out! – Yuk factor II. Pay attention to punctuation in Bulgarian.
II. How will you translate the title of Origin of Species? Do not forget to use inverted commas for titles in Bulgarian.
Write the names of the following famous people in Bulgarian: Look them up in Google.
Gianni Agnelli on the other hand a metaphor which is technically ‘dead’ (e.g., iron resolution) has in effect reverted to being an ordinary word and can generally be used without loss of vividness. But in between these two classes there is a huge dump of worn-out metaphors which are merely used because they save people the trouble of inventing phrases for themselves.”
Every issue of The Economist contains scores of metaphors: trails of crushed rivals, billing and cooing politicians, projects falling at the first hurdle, track records on inflation, tabloid reporters lapping up stories, reports leaving the door ajar, irresistible forces about to meet immovable objects, roadblocks in the path of reform, investors crying foul, doors slammed shut in China, blind eyes turned in Taiwan.
Some of these are tired, and will therefore tire the reader. Most are so exhausted that they may be considered dead, and are therefore permissible. But use all metaphors, dead or alive, sparingly, otherwise you will make trouble for yourself.
An issue of The Economist chosen at random had a package cutting the budget deficit, the administration loath to sign on to higher targets, liberals accused of playing politics on the court (Supreme, not tennis), only to find in the next sentence that the boot was on the other foot, the lure of eastern Germany as a springboard to the struggling markets of eastern Europe, west Europeanness helping to dilute an image, someone finding a pretext to stall the process before looking for a few integrationist crumbs, a spring clean that became in the next sentence a stalking-horse for greater spending, and Michelin axing jobs in painful surgery in order to stay at the top of a league table. Soon the Michelin man was plunging his company even further in to debt, though if it were to stay afloat his ambitions would have to be deflated.
Two pages on, the reader had to go down to the seas again when a flotilla of mutual and quoted life-assurance outfits were confident of surviving turbulent waters. The galleons were afloat, but the medium-sized and smaller mutuals quickly turned into fodder for domestic and foreign predators. Further on, banks going to the altar in the expectation of a tax-free dowry saw it become a sweetener in the next sentence and the bill that delivered it transformed into a panacea.
Those who wanted to learn about Japanese equity financing were told of a stockmarket crawling back (not on its feet, it was explained) towards its old high, of commercial banks keeping the wolf from the door and, three paragraphs later, of the stockmarket's double whammy. On, on went the reader past masked bunglings, key measures, money-supply growth out of hand, a haunted Bank of Japan redoubling its squeeze, banks slashing growth lest they found themselves on a tight leash before being cracked down on. Few could have been surprised to learn at the end of the article that another dose of higher interest rates might be forced on the banks if the present inflationary symptoms turned into measles-like spots, and if the apothecaries at the finance ministry agreed with the diagnosis.
Others are even more extravagant in their figures of speech. These two sentences were used as an opening paragraph to arrest the attention of the readers of A.N. Other newspaper:
••Bulgaria is on its knees. A long-simmering economic crisis has erupted, gripping the country in a fierce and unrelenting embrace.
Another publication reported:
••The basic question for the Bush campaign, as the fervour from the Republican convention in Houston last week dissipates, is whether or not it is barking up the wrong social tree by painting an exclusionary picture of an American society that has otherwise long been characterised as a melting-pot eternally susceptible to change. This may only be part of the broader election canvas, which also runs to more legitimate criticism of the opposition . . .
On another occasion, it lamented:
••Mr Clinton has had to pull the plug on a plan that had been tarred as a bail-out for an incompetent regime and the Wall Street fat cats who invested in it.
And poor Reuters had to report that:
••A BBC statement said today: “This is an off-the-wall programme with a track record of cutting-edge humour, but on this occasion we appear to have overstepped the mark.”
So did Léon Dion, cited as “an important constitutional expert” by another publication:
••In his opinion, give the Anglophones an inch and they will demand a mile. “The signs issue is just the Trojan horse, ” he says. “It is the tip of the iceberg. Once the dam is open you won't be able to close it.”
Exercises
Find appropriate translations for the metaphors highlighted in bold. Find other instances of metaphors and translate them. Can metaphors be always transferred into the target language as metaphors?
UNIT 2 Preliminary considerations:
1. Read through the text and find those words that are terms. Look them up in terminological databases.
2. What extralinguistic knowledge does the translator need to have? Use a dictionary of economic terms to understand the meaning of: Economic nationalism, Consortium bid, Private equity firm, Stake, Pre-emption rights, Non-binding offer
3. Make a list of all economic terms referred to in the text and find their precise translations.
4. Find possible "false friends" - words and phrases that are not directly transferable in the target language: Pie in the sky, Make a basket case, Industry observer, Advocate, Financial clout 5. Which proper names have acquired circulation in Bulgarian with spelling deviating from the traditional phonetic transcription rules.
‘Pie in the Sky’
There is no Spanish or Italian solution to the problems of Iberia and Alitalia
For all the brave talk of liberalization, the airline business has yet to escape the bane of economic nationalism. American airlines will still be out of bounds to foreign ownership when the new "open skies” agreement with Europe comes into force next April. And within the European Union, although such obstacles officially do not exist, the reality is rather different.
This week a € 3.4 billion ($ 5 billion) consortium bid for Iberia, the Spanish "flag carrier” by British Airways (BA), Texas Pacific Group and three Spanish private-equity firms crumbled in the face of political resistance. Caja Madrid, a savings bank controlled by Madrid’s regional government, raised its stake to Iberia to 23.3%. The move was designed to force BA, which owns 10%, to exercise pre-emption rights and raise its own stake, or back off. Having promised not to spend BA’s cash on the bid, Willie Walsh, its chief executive, had no option but to retreat.
Meanwhile on December 5th Alitalia, Italy’s national airline, hopes to receive non-binding offers for most of the Italian government’s 49.9% stake. It may be disappointed. Alitalia, which loses about €1m a day, is a very different proposition from Iberia, which is decently managed and modestly profitable. But its fate also lies in the hands of politicians rather than those appointed to run the business.
Having made a basket case of Alitalia through years if interference, the Italian government doomed a previous attempt to auction its shares last July by imposing a string of conditions, including requirements to maintain bloated staffing levels (cabin crew work less than 10 hours a week), keep open loss-making routes, retain Rome as a hub airport and preserve Alitalia’s national identity. This time round, the conditions of sale are said to be less onerous, but so far the only airline that looks almost certain to bid is Air One. Despite being Italy’s second-biggest carrier, it is
a relative tiddler with revenues last year just one-eighth of Alitalia’s Air One has political support and the backing of Italy’s second-biggest bank. But industry observers reckon that Alitalia has little future outside the sheltering embrace of one of the big three European network carriers – Lufthansa, Air France-KLM or BA.
The same is true of Iberia, even though it is much healthier. Its domestic and short-haul routes, like Alitalia’s, are under relentless attack from low-cost competitors such as Ryanair and Easyjet.
And the final section of the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed rail link is about to open, depriving Iberia of Europe’s most profitable route. Innovata, a provider of travel-industry data, says that since 2002 Iberia’s domestic market share has fallen from 59% to 32%, and Alitalia’s from 52% to 40%.
Iberia’s chairman, Fernando Conte, is a realist who advocates further consolidation. He would have welcomed a tie-up between Iberia and BA if it could have been done speedily and on the right terms. The two airlines are members of the same alliance and co-operate on a number of routes. BA says it is not too sorry to have failed to bag Iberia. But its hope for business as usual is probably forlorn. Iberia will eventually have to find a partner with scale and financial clout. Lufthansa, which has far less overlap with Iberia’s lucrative Latin American routes than Air France-KLM does, seems the likeliest candidate.
Nor is there an Italian solution to Alitalia’s plight, whatever politicians imagine. Nick van den Brul of Exane BNP Paribas points out that although the Italian business-travel market is booming, the only value in Alitalia itself is “option value” contingent upon a purchaser’s ability to do whatever needed to turn the business around €1.2 billion, an eldelry fleet and at least ten stroppy unions to deal with, any potential buyer – Air France-KLM says it is still interested – will want the Italian government to take on some of the risk. When will reality bite? That is the awkward question for the meddling politicians of Italy and Spain.
Exercises 1. Focus
A. Choose the correct translation for:
Pie in the sky = на куково лято / баница в небето / лесна работа / безнадеждна работа
B. Look up the following phrases in the dictionary and suggest suitable translation. Try to preserve the possible metaphors rather than paraphrase them.
to crumble in the face of
non-binding offer C. Find appropriate translations of the following journalese slang expressions:
He really hit the big time in 1994
the thumbs up, the thumbs down or the green light.
gravy trains
Elections described as too close to call mandarins
What is Blu-ray? Blu-ray Disc, or BD, is an optical disc that uses state-of-the-art blue-violet laser technology to enable consumers to record high-definition TV broadcasting. Developed by the
"Blu-ray Disc Founders" group, these companies include Hitachi, LG, Matsushita, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, and Thomson. Although Blu-ray Disc was primarily designed to be a
"consumer high definition video recording format", its very high storage capacities and high-speed data transfer rates also make Blu-ray Disc suitable for storage libraries and ultimately other applications. A Blu-ray Disc has the same physical size as a DVD (12cm) but has higher data and track densities that give it between roughly three to six times the storage capacity of a standard 4.7GB DVD-R. This feat is made possible using a 405 nm (405 billionth of a meter) blue-violet laser, actually violet-purple, and an optical pickup head with a 0.85 NA (numerical aperture) lens. Because a blue-violet light laser has a shorter wavelength (405 nm) than the red light (650 nm) used in CD and DVD systems, it allows the laser beam to make a smaller spot on the disc surface.
With each bit of data taking up less space on the disc, more data can be stored on a 4.7-inch disc.
Exercises
I. Vocabulary build-up: Identify the sense in which the word is used in the text above. Use the empty space to suggest correspondences in Bulgarian in each of the senses listed. Which will be your final choice for this specific instance? Why? Continue the same way with the words marked in bold, as well as any other problematic words.
II. Focus:
A. The third sentence, beginning ‘Developed by the "Blu-ray Disc Founders" group, these companies’ clearly presents a problem, as these companies were not developed by the above group. This is a case of sloppy writing, which should be corrected and translated accordingly B. Consider "consumer high definition video recording format". These noun accumulations are
common for non-fiction writing, their purpose is to avoid unnecessary prepositions and be brief.
They are derived by pre-posing the following nouns and omitting the prepositions. Thus, the above is returned back to normal as: a format for recording of video with high definition for consumers. That is, the last noun is the leading one, the others follow with prepositions.
Translate accordingly. Try to find other such groups in the same sentence.
C. Do we translate the names of foreign companies, or do we leave them in Latin letters? What do we do with Blu-ray, which is obviously a trade name, or Trademark? What do we do with the abbreviations CD, DVD, GB? What do they mean?
D. Consider the translation of make in the last sentence but one. Lasers actually ‘burn’ spots on the
D. Consider the translation of make in the last sentence but one. Lasers actually ‘burn’ spots on the