2. Now listen to the interview and make notes on Michael Gove and Professor Tony Briggs’s opinions. Compare your notes with those of your partner.
3. Read the following statements and decide whether they are True (t) or False (f). Correct the false ones.
Michael Gove believes you shouldn’t read translated works of literature.
Michael Gove thinks it is impossible to render all the nuances of a piece of literature into another language.
Professor Tony Briggs thinks everybody should read “War and Peace” in the original.
Jane Austen in “Pride and Prejudice” tried to prove that “Every man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife”.
In Professor Briggs’s opinion you do not get a lot when you are reading a translated work of literature.
Translation of technical terms and slang does not pose difficulties to a translator.
According to Professor Tony Briggs it is almost impossible to translate poetry.
Michael Gove supports Matthew Parris that even if you read a second rate author in your native language you get more than when you read a translated piece of literature.
Now listen again and check.
Work with your partner. Summarise Professor Tony Briggs and Michael Gove’s opinions on the problem of translation of literature works.
(From BBC Today http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_7601000/7601662.stm)
6. Discuss the following questions.
Do you agree with Michael Gove who said that reading translated literature involves a loss of nuance, a sacrifice of subtlety? Is there any use in reading any translation?
Is something really lost in your life if you haven’t read some great books? Why? Why not?
Will a translated work mean as much to you as it will to a native speaker?
Why should people read translations if there are so many native authors they haven’t read?
What is more important – to read any work of literature in the original or be a conscious reader of both translated and original works?
READING 2. In the Near Future
1. What do you know about computer translation systems? How do they work?
2. Now read the text below and find out.
In the near future
I am not a person whose technical knowledge of computers will impress anyone unduly, but I can say I am very enthusiastic about some of the new technology I found at this year's Fair of the Future. The products that struck my imagination the most were language interpretation workstations, which will certainly affect the future of communication around the world. Several promising computer translation technologies are in the research model or prototype stage, and one of the most extraordinary models has been developed by the NEC Corporation's Media Technology Research Laboratory in Tokyo.
The commercial version of this computer translation system will probably be built into a workstation computer, which will work something like this:
Imagine a conversation between a hotel reservations clerk and a customer. The clerk, whose native language is Japanese, says, "Reservation desk. May I help you?" This spoken language is broken down into an analog pattern by a speech-analysis computer. The analog data is matched against patterns stored in a vocabulary database and then undergoes a two-step translation process. First, it is converted into Pivot, an artificial computer language developed by NEC. Then the data undergoes speech synthesis again and comes out in English, which the customer understands. The customer replies, "I would like to make a reservation," and the process begins all over again, this time from English to Japanese.
The technology behind this simple conversational exchange is extremely complicated and far from perfect at this time. It is, however, an important step in the right direction for NEC, whose ultimate vision is that of an interpreting telephone. Their computer scientists look forward to the day when anyone can speak on the telephone in any language with anyone in the world. They have certainly taken an interesting and innovative step in that direction.