B. PACKAGE LEAFLET
2. What you need to know before you take Vokanamet Do not take Vokanamet
4. a. The combat arm that deploys armored vehicles, such as tanks. b. The armored vehicles of an army.
generalities
ideas or statements that emphasize vague or imprecise characteristics rather than the specific details of a subject
Informally, to sweat is synonymous to fret or worry about, as in the example Don't sweat the details. Can you think of a similarly informal, somewhat tautological phrase in Bulgarian to convey the ring of ‘to fret and sweat’ from the text?
How would you describe the tone of voice of Sontag as conveyed by the length of her sentences, syntax structure, levels of concreteness and abstraction in the words she uses? Does your translated version reveal a similar tone of voice?
‘To Invigorate Literary Mind, Start Moving Literary Feet’
By Joyce Carol Oates
(The New York Times, July 18, 1999)
Running! If there’s any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can’t think what it might be. In running the mind flies with the body; the mysterious efflorescence of language seems to pulse in the brain, in rhythm with our feet and the swinging of our arms. Ideally, the runner who’s a writer is running through the land- and cityscapes of her fiction, like a ghost in a real setting.
There must be some analogue between running and dreaming. The dreaming mind is usually bodiless, has peculiar powers of locomotion and, in my experience at least, often runs or glides or “flies” along the ground or in the air. (Leaving aside the blunt, deflating theory that dreams are merely compensatory: you fly in sleep because in life you crawl, barely;
you’re soaring above others in sleep because in life others soar above you.)
Possibly these fairy-tale feats of locomotion are atavistic remnants, the hallucinatory memory of a distant ancestor for whom the physical being, charged with adrenaline in emergency situations, was indistinguishable from the spiritual or intellectual. In running,
“spirit” seems to pervade the body; as musicians experience the uncanny phenomenon of
tissue memory in their fingertips, so the runner seems to experience in feet, lungs, quickened heartbeat, an extension of the imagining self.
The structural problems I set for myself in writing, in a long, snarled, frustrating and sometimes despairing morning of work, for instance, I can usually unsnarl by running in the afternoon.
On days when I can’t run, I don’t feel “myself”; and whoever the “self” is I feel, I don’t like nearly so much as the other. And the writing remains snarled in endless revisions.
Writers and poets are famous for loving to be in motion. If not running, hiking; if not hiking, walking. (Walking, even fast, is a poor second to running, as all runners know, what we’ll resort to when our knees go. But at least it’s an option.)
The English Romantic poets were clearly inspired by their long walks, in all weather:
Wordsworth and Coleridge in the idyllic Lake District, for instance; Shelley (“I always go until I am stopped and I never am stopped”) in his four intense years in Italy. The New England Transcendentalists, most famously Henry David Thoreau, were ceaseless walkers;
Thoreau boasted of having “travelled much in Concord, ” and in his eloquent essay
“Walking” acknowledged that he had to spend more than four hours out of doors daily, in motion; otherwise he felt “as if I had some sin to be atoned for.”
My favourite prose on the subject is Charles Dickens’s “Night Walks, ” which he wrote some years after having suffered extreme insomnia that propelled him out into the London streets at night. Written with Dickens’s usual brilliance, this haunting essay seems to hint at more than its words reveal. He associates his terrible night restlessness with what he calls
“houselessness”: under a compulsion to walk and walk and walk in the darkness and pattering rain. (No one has captured the romance of desolation, the ecstasy of near-madness, more forcibly than Dickens, so wrongly interpreted as a dispenser of popular, soft-hearted tales.)
It isn’t surprising that Walt Whitman should have tramped impressive distances, for you can feel the pulse beat of the walker in his slightly breathless, incantatory poems. But it may be surprising to learn that Henry James, whose prose style more resembles the fussy
1. making lively and cheerful; "the exhilarating effect of mountain air"
2. elating: making lively and joyful
efflorescence (of language) n.
1. Botany A state or time of flowering; anthesis.
2. a. A gradual process of unfolding or developing. b. The highest point; the culmination. (Bloom)
3. Chemistry a. The deposit that results from the process of efflorescing. Also called bloom. b. The process of efflorescing.
c. A growth of salt crystals on a surface caused by evaporation of salt-laden water.
4. Pathology Redness, a rash, or an eruption on the skin.
Which of the many
1. A notable act or deed, especially an act of courage; an exploit.
2. An act of skill, endurance, imagination, or strength; an achievement.
3. Obsolete A specialized skill; a knack.
Synonyms: achievement, exploit, masterstroke
uncanny adj.
Of a mysteriously strange and usually frightening nature: eerie, unearthly, weird. Informal spooky.
restlessness n.
1. the quality of being ceaselessly moving or active; "the restlessness of the wind"
2. a lack of patience; irritation with anything that causes delay
3. fidget: a feeling of agitation expressed in continual motion;
"he's got the fidgets"; "waiting gave him a feeling of restlessness"
4. inability to rest or relax or be still
to patter v.
1. To make a quick succession of light soft tapping sounds:
Rain pattered steadily against the glass.
2. To move with quick, light, softly audible steps.
Given the
1. a container so designed that the contents can be used in prescribed amounts
1. Effected against resistance through the use of force.
2. Characterized by force; powerful.
incantatory adj.
using spells or verbal charms spoken or sung as a part of a ritual of magic; also: a written or recited formula of words designed to produce a particular effect
compulsion n.
1.urge, need, obsession, necessity, preoccupation, drive 2. force, pressure, obligation, constraint, urgency, coercion, duress, demand
desolation n.
1. the state of being decayed or destroyed [devastation, ruin]
2. a bleak and desolate atmosphere [bleakness]
3. sadness resulting from being forsaken or abandoned [forlornness, loneliness]
4. an event that results in total destruction [devastation]
Again, with
Consider this widely used example to differentiate between the uses of –ed and –ing forms:
‘His boring lecture very nearly put me to sleep’ vis-à-vis ‘I was so bored by his lecture I very nearly fell asleep’. How would you translate these sentences into Bulgarian? In both cases, even though the first describes the quality of the lecture and the second the state of the person, who suffers from boredom?
Along similar lines, consider the phrases ‘deflating theory’ and ‘haunting essay’ from the text.
Before looking for possible translation correspondences, consider briefly who is haunted by the essay and who is the theory deflating for.
Decide in what sense ‘snarl’ is used in all instances. Try to preserve the threefold repetition.
In your view, which aspect of hallucinatory is used here: characterized by or characteristic of hallucination in relation to memory? Consider the entire sentence.
Which sense of the word ‘fussy’ and ‘intricacies’ is emphasized in the combination ‘the fussy intricacies of crocheting’ as a description to Henry James’s style?
‘Quick Cuts: The Novel Follows Film Into a World of Fewer Words’
By E. L. Doctorow
(The New York Times, March 15, 1999)
Movies began in silence. The early filmmakers learned to convey meaning apart from the use of language. For the most part the title cards of the silent films only nailed down the intelligence given to the audience nonverbally. (Young couple on porch swing at night. He removes a ring from his vest pocket. He gazes into her eyes. Title card: "Milly, will you be my wife?")
In the modern audible feature film, especially as made by Hollywood, spoken dialogue tends more and more to function as the old title cards of the silents. The genre of the film is indicated with the portentous opening credits. The beginning shots site the film and identify its time period. A given scene is lighted, and the camera is positioned to create mood or inform the audience as to how it is to regard what it is seeing, how serious or unserious the story may be, how objectively we may regard the characters, how intimately we are being asked to share their adventures.
The film stock is color coordinated with its subject. The actors are dressed, and their hair is cut or coiffed, to indicate age, economic class, social status, education and even degree of virtue. They're directed to demonstrate their characters' states of mind with bodily attitudes, gestures, facial expressions and the movements of their eyes. Given all this, the weight of the scene is carried nonverbally. What is seen and felt is a signifying context for any words actually spoken. In some of today's film dramas, 95 percent of a scene's meaning is conveyed before a word is uttered; 98 percent if you add music.
Of course recent filmmakers -- Eric Rohmer, for example, or Louis Malle -- have made highly verbal films. As a generalization, the assemblage of visual effects that make of dialogue a capstone is less true of comedy. The art of the television sitcom, for example, is highly verbal. Its standing sets, and its inclination to celebrate character, provide the impetus for wordplay, gags and verbal economies that can verge on the aphoristic. On the other hand the sitcom's mostly interior scenes and its limited scope for camera setups suggest it is closer to a filmed stage play than it is to movies.
In the 1930s and 40s, when stage plays and books were a major source of film scripts, the talkies were talkier (as adaptations of Shakespeare are still). Films of that period were, by comparison with today's products, logorrheic. Even action films, the Bogart film noir, the Errol Flynn swashbuckler, abounded with dialogue. Now, after a century of development, the medium of film generates its own culture. Its audience is as schooled in its rhythms and motifs and habits of being as Wagnerians are in der Nibelungen. Films work off previous films. They are genre referential and can be more of what they are by nature.
V. Vocabulary build-up.
to nail sth down phr.
to make something certain or final. My uncle has been meeting people all over the state to nail down support for his senate campaign.
a capstone n.
1. The top stone of a structure or wall.
2. The crowning achievement or final stroke; the culmination or acme.
Capstone publications The top group of joint doctrine publications in the hie-rarchy of joint
publications. Capstone publications link joint doctrine to national strategy and the contributions of other government agencies,
alliances, and coalitions. See
1. Something forced into or put over the mouth to prevent speaking or crying out.
2. An obstacle to or a censoring of free speech.
3. A device placed in the mouth to keep it open, as in dentistry.
4. a. A practical joke. b. A comic effect or remark.
5. The act or an instance of gagging or choking.
impetus n.
1. An impelling force; an impulse.
2. The force or energy associated with a moving body.
3.
a. Something that incites; a stimulus.
b. Increased activity in response to a stimulus: The approaching deadline gave impetus to the investigation.
logorrhea n.
excessive and often incoherent talkativeness or wordiness
med. pressured speech; excessive and rapid speech, seen in certain mental disorders.
a coif n.
tr.v.
1. A coiffure.
2. A tight-fitting cap worn under a veil, as by nuns.
3. A white skullcap formerly worn by English lawyers.
4. A heavy skullcap of steel or leather, formerly worn under a helmet or mail hood.
1. To arrange or dress (the hair).
2. To cover with or as if with a coif.
portentous adj.
1. Of the nature of or constituting a portent; foreboding:
“The present aspect of society is portentous of great change” (Edward Bellamy).
2. Full of unspecifiable significance; exciting wonder and awe: “Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity” (Herman Melville).
3. Marked by pompousness; pretentiously weighty.
intelligence n.
1. the ability to comprehend; to understand and profit from experience
2. secret information about an enemy (or potential enemy); "we sent out planes to gather intelligence on their radar coverage"
3. news: information about recent and important events;
"they awaited news of the outcome"
4. the operation of gathering information about an enemy
VI. One of the features of the text above is the use of terms which belong to film industry.
Find out the terminological equivalents used in Bulgarian.
feature film; title cards; silents; talkies; standing sets; film noir; opening credits; shots;
film stock; signifying context; sitcom; genre referential
How would you convey terms which do not necessarily have currency in Bulgarian?
Swashbuckler, for example, is a term that developed in the 16th century to describe rough, noisy and boastful swordsmen. It is based on a fighting style using a side-sword with a
buckler in the off-hand, which was filled with much "swashing and making a noise on the buckler". en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swashbuckler
‘Gag’ is also used as a term here. Consider its synonyms below and try to find correspondences in Bulgarian for each specific situation listed.
Synonyms: joke, jest, witticism, quip, sally, crack, wisecrack, gag. These nouns refer to something that is said or done in order to evoke laughter or amusement. Joke especially denotes an amusing story with a punch line at the end: told jokes at the party. Jest suggests frolicsome humor: amusing jests that defused the tense situation. A witticism is a witty, usually cleverly phrased remark: a speech full of witticisms. A quip is a clever, pointed, often sarcastic remark: responded to the tough questions with quips. Sally denotes a sudden quick witticism: ended the debate with a brilliant sally. Crack and wisecrack refer less formally to flippant or sarcastic retorts: made a crack about my driving ability; punished for making wisecracks in class. Gag is principally applicable to a broadly comic remark or to comic by-play in a theatrical routine: one of the most memorable gags in the history of vaudeville.
‘Stock’ has over 18 senses and specific uses. In which one do you think it is used here in combination with ‘film’?
VII. Focus:
Before translating the sentence ‘The film stock is color coordinated with its subject’, consider the meaning of ‘color coordinated’: matched in color and pattern so as to be pleasing to the esthetic sense; as in ‘His shirt and tie were color coordinated’.
From your background knowledge of essay writing and paragraph structure, what is the function of the opening sentence in a paragraph?
In which sense is ‘attitudes’ used in the text?
1. personal view of something: an opinion or general feeling about something; a positive attitude to change
2. bodily posture: a physical posture, either conscious or unconscious, especially while interacting with others
3. challenging manner: an arrogant or assertive manner or stance assumed as a challenge or for effect (informal); a streetwise teenager with attitude
4. aviation orientation of aircraft's axes: the angle of an aircraft in relation to the direction of the airflow or to the horizontal plane
What strategies are you going to use so as to ‘translate’ the proper names used in the essay above?
‘Inventing Life Steals Time; Living Life Begs It Back’
By Gish Jen
(The New York Times, December 4, 2000)
To write is to understand why Keats writes of living "under an everlasting restraint, never relieved except when I am composing." It is to recognize Kafka's longing to be locked in the innermost room of a basement, with food anonymously left for him. It is to know why Alice Munro describes the face of the artist as unfriendly; and it is to envy Philip Roth, who, rumor
has it, has sequestered himself in a cabin in the Berkshires. He is writing, writing, people say, writing without distractions, only writing. To which the news part of us asks: Is that a life?
Can you really call that a life? That is our sanity speaking. But another part, the writer part, answers, yes.
One must live in order to have something to write about. That's the commonplace wisdom, and to be engaged with the world is no bad thing; it is essential. Still the bulk of everyday life comes as an interruption. Some people maintain that everything becomes material, but in truth it does not. It is entirely possible, for starters, to have too much of one kind of material; ask anyone in a menial job. But this is the stuff of another essay.
Allow me to claim that at 45, a mother of young children, I have a life that is mostly not material, that I simply live. Writing competes with that life and shortens its run. I struggle not to hurry my time with my children; I endeavor to lose myself with them even as I squeeze every last minute out of the rest of the day. I calculate; I weigh; I optimize. That I may lose myself again in my work, I map out the day, the route, the menu. I duck, I duck. I hoard the hours and despair in traffic jams. Worse, I keep an eye on my involvements. I give myself freely enough to others, but only so freely. I wonder if writing is worth this last price in particular.
Art is selfish, Cynthia Ozick has said. Lyndall Gordon has brought us face to face with the coldbloodedness of Henry James and T. S. Eliot; Ms. Ozick has deemed the work worth it.
Faulkner proclaimed the writer's only responsibility to be to his art. He famously claimed that if he had to rob his mother, he would not hesitate, and that "the `Ode on a Grecian Urn' is worth any number of old ladies."
We might wonder today if it is worth any number of young men; but let's not. For the central question is: Even if a certain ruthlessness were necessary and justified in the case of Henry James, say, would it be justified for the rest of us?
I know I will indeed quit writing before I put live humans on the altar; I am sorry enough to be short with people, sometimes, or intermittently available. But I do not know what is right. When people talk about being between worlds, they generally mean cultural dislocation of a geopolitical sort. Writers, though, are also caught between worlds. We may profess clarity about our allegiance, but novelists particularly cannot escape a concern with the moral.
In truth, the possessed — of any stripe probably — are as inwardly divided as the dispossessed.
VIII. Vocabulary build-up.
sequestered adj.
1. cloistered: providing privacy or seclusion; "the cloistered academic world of books"; "sat close together in the sequestered pergola"; "sitting ...
2. kept separate and secluded; "a sequestered jury"
commonplace adj.
1. Commonly encountered: average, common, general, normal, ordinary, typical, usual..
2. Being of no special quality or type: average, common, cut-and-dried, formulaic, garden, garden-variety, indifferent, mediocre, ordinary, plain, routine, run-of-the-mill, standard, stock, undistinguished, unexceptional, unremarkable.
3. Without freshness or appeal because of overuse: banal, bromidic, clichéd, corny, hackneyed, musty, overused, overworked, platitudinal, platitudinous,
3. Without freshness or appeal because of overuse: banal, bromidic, clichéd, corny, hackneyed, musty, overused, overworked, platitudinal, platitudinous,